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Helen of the Old House

by Harold Bell Wright · English · Gutenberg #9410 · 522,072 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Helen of the Old House

Author: Harold Bell Wright


        
Release date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9410]
                Most recently updated: August 7, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9410

Credits: Produced by Brendan Lane, Josephine Paolucci and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HELEN OF THE OLD HOUSE ***




Produced by Brendan Lane, Josephine Paolucci and PG
Distributed Proofreaders











HELEN OF THE OLD HOUSE


BY HAROLD BELL WRIGHT


1921




CONTENTS


BOOK ONE

THE INTERPRETER


CHAPTER

I. THE HUT ON THE CLIFF

II. LITTLE MAGGIE'S PRINCESS LADY

III. THE INTERPRETER

IV. PETER MARTIN AT HOME

V. ADAM WARD'S ESTATE

VI. ON THE OLD ROAD

VII. THE HIDDEN THING

VIII. WHILE THE PEOPLE SLEEP

IX. THE MILL

X. CONCERNING THE NEW MANAGER

XI. COMRADES

XII. TWO SIDES OF A QUESTION


BOOK TWO

THE TWO HELENS


XIII. THE AWAKENING

XIV. THE WAY BACK

XV. AT THE OLD HOUSE

XVI. HER OWN PEOPLE

XVII. IN THE NIGHT


BOOK THREE

THE STRIKE


XVIII. THE GATHERING STORM

XIX. ADAM WARD'S WORK

XX. THE PEOPLE'S AMERICA

XXI. PETER MARTIN'S PROBLEM

XXII. OLD FRIENDS

XXIII. A LAST CHANCE

XXIV. THE FLATS

XXV. McIVER's OPPORTUNITY

XXVI. AT THE CALL OF THE WHISTLE

XXVII. JAKE VODELL'S MISTAKE

XXVIII. THE MOB AND THE MILL

XXIX. CONTRACTS


BOOK FOUR

THE OLD HOUSE


XXX. "JEST LIKE THE INTERPRETER SAID"




BOOK I

THE INTERPRETER


"_Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
  The torch; be yours to hold it high.
  If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
    In Flanders fields_."




CHAPTER I

THE HUT ON THE CLIFF


No well informed resident of Millsburgh, when referring to the
principal industry of his little manufacturing city, ever says "the
mills"--it is always "the Mill."

The reason for this common habit of mind is that one mill so
overshadows all others, and so dominates the industrial and civic life
of this community, that in the people's thought it stands for all.

The philosopher who keeps the cigar stand on the corner of Congress
Street and Ward Avenue explained it very clearly when he answered an
inquiring stranger, "You just can't think Millsburgh without thinkin'
mills; an' you can't think mills without thinkin' _the_ Mill."

As he turned from the cash register to throw his customer's change on
the scratched top of the glass show case, the philosopher added with a
grin that was a curious blend of admiration, contempt and envy, "An'
you just can't think the Mill without thinkin' Adam Ward."

That grin was another distinguishing mark of the well informed resident
of Millsburgh. Always, in those days, when the citizens mentioned the
owner of the Mill, their faces took on that curious half-laughing
expression of mingled admiration, contempt and envy.

But it has come to pass that in these days when the people speak of
Adam Ward they do not smile. When they speak of Adam Ward's daughter,
Helen, they smile, indeed, but with quite a different meaning.

The history of Millsburgh is not essentially different from that of a
thousand other cities of its class.

Born of the natural resources of the hills and forests, the first rude
mill was located on that wide sweeping bend of the river. About this
industrial beginning a settlement gathered. As the farm lands of the
valley were developed, the railroad came, bringing more mills. And so
the town grew up around its smoky heart.

It was in those earlier days that Adam Ward, a workman then, patented
and introduced the new process. It was the new process, together with
its owner's native genius for "getting on," that, in time, made Adam
the owner of the Mill. And, finally, it was this combination of Adam
and the new process that gave this one mill dominion over all others.

As the Mill increased in size, importance and power, and the town grew
into the city, Adam Ward's material possessions were multiplied many
times.

Then came the year of this story.

It was midsummer. The green, wooded hills that form the southern
boundary of the valley seemed to be painted on shimmering gauze. The
grainfields on the lowlands across the river were shining gold. But the
slate-colored dust from the unpaved streets of that section of
Millsburgh known locally as the "Flats" covered the wretched houses,
the dilapidated fences, the hovels and shanties, and everything animate
or inanimate with a thick coating of dingy gray powder. Shut in as it
is between a long curving line of cliffs on the south and a row of tall
buildings on the river bank, the place was untouched by the refreshing
breeze that stirred the trees on the hillside above. The hot,
dust-filled atmosphere was vibrant with the dull, droning voice of the
Mill. From the forest of tall stacks the smoke went up in slow,
twisting columns to stain the clean blue sky with a heavy cloud of
dirty brown.

The deep-toned whistle of the Mill had barely called the workmen from
their dinner pails and baskets when two children came along the road
that for some distance follows close to the base of that high wall of
cliffs. By their ragged, nondescript clothing which, to say the least,
was scant enough to afford them comfort and freedom of limb, and by the
dirt, that covered them from the crowns of their bare, unkempt heads to
the bottoms of their bare, unwashed feet, it was easy to identify the
children as belonging to that untidy community.

One was a sturdy boy of eight or nine neglected years. On his rather
heavy, freckled face and in his sharp blue eyes there was, already, a
look of hardness that is not good to see in the countenance of a child.
The other, his sister, was two years younger--a thin wisp of a girl,
with tiny stooping shoulders, as though, even in her babyhood, she had
found a burden too heavy. With her tired little face and grave,
questioning eyes she looked at the world as if she were wondering,
wistfully, why it should bother to be so unkind to such a helpless mite
of humanity.

As they came down the worn road, side by side they chose with
experienced care those wheel ruts where the black dust lay thickest
and, in solemn earnestness, plowed the hot tracks with their bare feet,
as if their one mission in life were to add the largest possible cloud
of powdered dirt to the already murky atmosphere of the vicinity.

Suddenly they stood still.

For a long, silent moment they gazed at a rickety old wooden stairway
that, at this point in the unbroken line of cliffs, climbs zigzag up
the face of the rock-buttressed wall. Then, as if moved by a common
impulse, they faced each other. The quick fire of adventure kindled in
the eyes of the boy as he met the girl's look of understanding.

"Let's go up--stump yer," he said, with a daredevil grin.

"Huh, yer wouldn't dast."

Womanlike, she was hoping that he would "dast" and, with the true
instinct of her sex, she chose unerringly the one way to bring about
the realization of her hope.

Her companion met the challenge like a man. With a swaggering show of
courage, he went to the stairway and climbed boldly up--six full steps.
Then he paused and looked down, "I don't dast, don't I?"

From the lower step she spurred his faltering spirit, "Dare yer--dare
yer--dare yer."

He came reluctantly down two steps, "Will yer go up if I do?"

She nodded, "Uh-huh--but yer gotter go first."

He looked doubtfully up at the edge of the cliff so far above them.
"Shucks," he said, with conviction, "ain't nobody up there 'cept old
Interpreter, an' that dummy, Billy Rand. I know 'cause Skinny Davis an'
Chuck Wilson, they told me. They was up--old Interpreter, he can't do
nothin' to nobody--he ain't got no legs."

Gravely she considered with him the possible dangers of the proposed
adventure. "Billy Rand has got legs."

"He can't hear nothin', though--can't talk neither," said the leader of
the expedition. "An' besides maybe he ain't there--we might catch him
out. What d'yer say? Will we chance it?"

She looked up doubtfully toward the unknown land above. "I dunno, will
we?"

"Skinny an' Chuck, they said the Interpreter give 'em cookies--an' told
'em stories too."

"Cookies, Gee! Go ahead--I'm a-comin'."

That tiny house high on the cliff at the head of the old, zigzag
stairway, up which the children now climbed with many doubtful stops
and questioning fears, is a landmark of interest not only to Millsburgh
but to the country people for miles around.

Perched on the perilous brink of that curving wall of rocks, with its
low, irregular, patched and weather-beaten roof, and its rough-boarded
and storm-beaten walls half hidden in a tangle of vines and bushes, the
little hut looks, from a distance, as though it might once have been
the strange habitation of some gigantic winged creature of prehistoric
ages. The place may be reached from a seldom-used road that leads along
the steep hillside, a quarter of a mile back from the edge of the
precipice, but the principal connecting link between the queer
habitation and the world is that flight of rickety wooden steps.

Taking advantage of an irregularity in the line of cliffs, the upper
landing of the stairway is placed at the side of the hut. In the rear,
a small garden is protected from the uncultivated life of the hillside
by a fence of close-set pickets. Across the front of the curious
structure, well out on the projecting point of rocks, and reached only
through the interior, a wide, strongly railed porch overhangs the sheer
wall like a balcony.

With fast-beating hearts, the two small adventurers gained the top of
the stairway. Cautiously they looked about--listening, conferring in
whispers, ready for instant, headlong retreat.

The tall grasses and flowering weeds on the hillside nodded sleepily in
the sunlight. A bird perched on a near-by bush watched them with bright
eyes for a moment, then fearlessly sought the shade of the vines that
screened the side of the hut. Save the distant, droning, moaning voice
of the Mill, there was no sound.

Calling up the last reserves of their courage, the children crept
softly along the board walk that connects the landing of the stairway
with the rude dwelling. Once again they paused to look and listen.
Then, timidly, they took the last cautious steps and stood in the open
doorway. With big, wondering eyes they stared into the room.

It was a rather large room, with a low-beamed ceiling of unfinished
pine boards and gray, rough-plastered walls, and wide windows. A
green-shaded student lamp with a pile of magazines and papers on the
table caught their curious eyes, and they gazed in awe at the long
shelves of books against the wall. Opposite the entrance where they
stood they saw a strongly made workbench. And beneath this bench and
piled in that corner of the room were baskets--dozens of them--of
several shapes and sizes; while brackets and shelves above were filled
with the materials of which the baskets were woven. There was very
little furniture. The floors were bare, the windows without hangings.
It was all so different from anything that these children of the Flats
had ever seen that they felt their adventure assuming proportions.

For what seemed a long time, the boy and the girl stood there,
hesitating, on the threshold, expecting something--anything--to happen.
Then the lad ventured a bold step or two into the room. His sister
followed timidly.

They were facing hungrily toward an open door that led, evidently, to
the kitchen, when a deep voice from somewhere behind them said, "How do
you do?"

Startled nearly out of their small wits, the adventurers whirled to
escape, but the voice halted them with, "Don't go. You came to see me,
didn't you?"

The voice, though so deep and strong, was unmistakably kind and
gentle--quite the gentlest voice, in fact, that these children had ever
heard.

Hesitatingly, they went again into the room, and now, turning their
backs upon the culinary end of the apartment, they saw, through the
doorway opening on to the balcony porch, a man seated in a wheel chair.
In his lap he held a half-finished basket.

For a little while the man regarded them with grave, smiling eyes as
though, understanding their fears, he would give them time to gain
courage. Then he said, gently, "Won't you come out here on the porch
and visit with me?"

The boy and the girl exchanged questioning looks.

"Come on," said the man, encouragingly.

Perhaps the sight of that wheel chair recalled to the boy's mind the
reports of his friends, Skinny and Chuck. Perhaps it was something in
the man himself that appealed to the unerring instincts of the child.
The doubt and hesitation in the urchin's freckled face suddenly gave
way to a look of reckless daring and he marched forward with the
swaggering air of an infant bravado. Shyly the little girl followed.

Invariably one's first impression of that man in the wheel chair was a
thought of the tremendous physical strength and vitality that must once
have been his. But the great trunk, with its mighty shoulders and
massive arms, that in the years past had marked him in the multitude,
was little more than a framework now. His head with its silvery white
hair and beard--save that in his countenance there was a look of more
venerable age--reminded one of the sculptor Rodin. These details of the
man's physical appearance held one's thoughts but for a moment. One
look into the calm depths of those dark eyes that were filled with such
an indescribable mingling of pathetic courage, of patient fortitude,
and of sorrowful authority, and one so instantly felt the dominant
spiritual and mental personality of this man that all else about him
was forgotten.

Squaring himself before his host, the boy said, aggressively, "I know
who _yer_ are. Yer are the Interpreter. I know 'cause yer ain't got no
legs."

"Yes," returned the old basket maker, still smiling, "I am the
Interpreter. At least," he continued, "that is what the people call
me." Then, as he regarded the general appearance of the children, and
noted particularly the tired face and pathetic eyes of the little girl,
his smile was lost in a look of brooding sorrow and his deep voice was
sad and gentle, as he added, "But some things I find very hard to
interpret."

The girl, with a shy smile, went a little nearer.

The boy, with his eyes fixed upon the covering that in spite of the
heat of the day hid the man in the wheel chair from his waist down,
said with the cruel insistency of childhood, "Ain't yer got no
legs--honest, now, ain't yer?"

The Interpreter laughed understandingly. Placing the unfinished basket
on a low table that held his tools and the material for his work within
reach of his hand, he threw aside the light shawl. "See!" he said.

For a moment the children gazed, breathlessly, at those shrunken and
twisted limbs that resembled the limbs of a strong man no more than the
empty, flapping sleeves of a scarecrow resemble the arms of a living
human body.

"They are legs all right," said the Interpreter, still smiling, "but
they're not much good, are they? Do you think you could beat me in a
race?"

"Gee!" exclaimed the boy.

Two bright tears rolled down the thin, dirty cheeks of the little
girl's tired face, and she turned to look away over the dirty Flats,
the smoke-grimed mills, and the golden fields of grain in the sunshiny
valley, to something that she seemed to see in the far distant sky.

With a quick movement the Interpreter again hid his useless limbs.

"And now don't you think you might tell me about yourselves? What is
your name, my boy?"

"I'm Bobby Whaley," answered the lad. "She's my sister, Maggie."

"Oh, yes," said the Interpreter. "Your father is Sam Whaley. He works
in the Mill."

"Uh-huh, some of the time he works--when there ain't no strikes ner
nothin'."

The Interpreter, with his eyes on that dark cloud that hung above the
forest of grim stacks, appeared to attach rather more importance to
Bobby's reply than the lad's simple words would justify.

Then, looking gravely at Sam Whaley's son, he said, "And you will work
in the Mill, too, I suppose, when you grow up?"

"I dunno," returned the boy. "I ain't much stuck on work. An' dad, he
says it don't git yer nothin', nohow."

"I see," mused the Interpreter, and he seemed to see much more than lay
on the surface of the child's characteristic expression.

The little girl was still gazing wistfully at the faraway line of
hills.

As if struck by a sudden thought, the Interpreter asked, "Your father
is working now, though, isn't he?"

"Uh-huh, just now he is."

"I suppose then you are not hungry."

At this wee Maggie turned quickly from contemplating the distant
horizon to consider the possible meaning in the man's remark.

For a moment the children looked at each other. Then, as a grin of
anticipation spread itself over his freckled face, the boy exclaimed,
"Hungry! Gosh! Mister Interpreter, we're allus hungry!"

For the first time the little girl spoke, in a thin, piping voice,
"Skinny an' Chuck, they said yer give 'em cookies. Didn't they, Bobby?"

"Uh-huh," agreed Bobby, hopefully.

The man in the wheel chair laughed. "If you go into the house and look
in the bottom part of that cupboard near the kitchen door you will find
a big jar and--"

But Bobby and Maggie had disappeared.

The children had found the jar in the cupboard and, with their hands
and their mouths filled with cookies, were gazing at each other in
unbelieving wonder when the sound of a step on the bare floor of the
kitchen startled them. One look through the open doorway and they fled
with headlong haste back to the porch, where they unhesitatingly sought
refuge behind their friend ha the wheel chair.

The object of their fears appeared a short moment behind them.

"Oh," said the Interpreter, reaching out to draw little Maggie within
the protecting circle of his arm, "it is Billy Rand. You don't need to
fear Billy."

The man who stood looking kindly down upon them was fully as tall and
heavy as the Interpreter had been in those years before the accident
that condemned him to his chair. But Billy Rand lacked the commanding
presence that had once so distinguished his older friend and guardian.
His age was somewhere between twenty and thirty; but his face was still
the face of an overgrown and rather slow-witted child.

Raising his hands, Billy Rand talked to the Interpreter in the sign
language of the deaf and dumb. The Interpreter replied in the same
manner and, with a smiling nod to the children, Billy returned to the
garden in the rear of the house.

Tiny Maggie's eyes were big with wonder.

"Gee!" breathed Bobby. "He sure enough can't talk, can he?"

"No," returned the Interpreter. "Poor Billy has never spoken a word."

"Gee!" said Bobby again. "An' can't he hear nothin,' neither?"

"No, Bobby, he has never heard a sound."

Too awe-stricken even to repeat his favorite exclamation, the boy
munched his cooky in silence, while Maggie, enjoying her share of the
old basket maker's hospitality, snuggled a little closer to the wheel
of the big chair.

"Billy Rand, you see," explained the Interpreter, "is my legs."

Bobby laughed. "Funny legs, I'd say."

"Yes," agreed the Interpreter, "but very good legs just the same. Billy
runs all sorts of errands for me--goes to town to sell our baskets and
to bring home our groceries, helps about the house and does many things
that I can't do. He is hoeing the garden this afternoon. He comes in
every once in a while to ask if I want anything. He sleeps in a little
room next to mine and sometimes in the night, when I am not resting
well, I hear him come to my bedside to see if I am all right."

"An' yer keep him an' take care of him?" asked Bobby.

"Yes," returned the Interpreter, "I take care of Billy and Billy takes
care of me. He has fine legs but not much of a--but cannot speak or
hear. I can talk and hear and think but have no legs. So with my
reasonably good head and his very good legs we make a fairly good man,
you see."

Bobby laughed aloud and even wee Maggie chuckled at the Interpreter's
quaint explanation of himself and Billy Rand.

"Funny kind of a man," said Bobby.

"Yes," agreed the Interpreter, "but most of us men are funny in one way
or another--aren't we, Maggie?" He looked down into the upturned face
of that tiny wisp of humanity at his side.

Maggie smiled gravely in answer.

Very confident now in his superiority over the Interpreter, whose deaf
and dumb legs were safely out of sight in the garden back of the house,
Bobby finished the last of his cookies, and began to explore.
Accompanying his investigations with a running fire of questions, he
fingered the unfinished basket and the tools and material on the table,
examined the wheel chair, and went from end to end of the balcony
porch. Hanging over the railing, he looked down from every possible
angle upon the rocks, the stairway and the dusty road below.
Exhausting, at last, the possibilities of the immediate vicinity, he
turned his inquiring gaze upon the more distant landscape.

"Gee! Yer can see a lot from here, can't yer?"

"Yes," returned the Interpreter, gravely, "you can certainly see a lot.
And do you know, Bobby, it is strange, but what you see depends almost
wholly on what you are?"

The boy turned his freckled face toward the Interpreter. "Huh?"

"I mean," explained the Interpreter, "that different people see
different things. Some who come to visit me can see nothing but the
Mill over there; some see only the Flats down below; others see the
stores and offices; others look at nothing but the different houses on
the hillsides; still others can see nothing but the farms. It is funny,
but that's the way it is with people, Bobby."

"Aw--what are yer givin' us?" returned Bobby, and, with an unmistakably
superior air, he faced again toward the scene before them. "I can see
the whole darned thing--I can."

The Interpreter laughed. "And that," he said, "is exactly what every
one says, Bobby. But, after all, they don't see the whole darned
thing--they only think they do."

"Huh," retorted the boy, scornfully, "I guess I can see the Mill, can't
I?--over there by the river--with the smoke a-rollin' out of her
chimneys? Listen, I can hear her, too."

Faintly, on a passing breath of air, came the heavy droning, moaning
voice of the Mill.

"Yes," agreed the Interpreter, with an odd note in his deep, kindly
voice, "I can nearly always hear it. I was sure you would see the
Mill."

"An' look-ee, look-ee," shouted the boy, forgetting, in his quick
excitement, to maintain this superior air, "look-ee, Mag! Come here,
quick." With energetic gestures he beckoned his sister to his side.
"Look-ee, right over there by that bunch of dust, see? It's our
house--where we live. That there's Tony's old place on the corner. An'
there's the lot where us kids plays ball. Gee, yer could almost see mom
if she'd only come outside to talk to Missus Grafton er somethin'!"

From his wheel chair the Interpreter watched the children at the porch
railing. "Of course you would see your home," he said, gravely. "The
Mill first, and then the place where you live. Nearly every one sees
those things first. Now tell what else you see."

"I see, I see--" The boy hesitated. There was so much to be seen from
the Interpreter's balcony porch.

The little girl's thin voice piped up with shrill eagerness, "Look at
the pretty yeller fields an' the green trees away over there across the
river, Bobby. Gee, but wouldn't yer just love to be over there
an'--an'--roll 'round in the grass, an' pick flowers, an' everything?"

"Huh," retorted Bobby. "Look-ee, that there's McIver's factory up the
river there. It's 'most as big as the Mill. An' see all the stores an'
barber shops an' things downtown--an' look-ee, there's the courthouse
where the jail is an'--"

Maggie chimed in with, "An' all the steeples of the churches--an'
everythin'."

"An' right down there," continued the boy, pointing more toward the
east where, at the edge of the Flats, the ground begins to rise toward
the higher slope of the hills, "in that there bunch of trees is where
Pete Martin lives, an' Mary an' Captain Charlie. Look-ee, Mag, yer can
see the little white house a-showin' through the green leaves."

"You know the Martins, do you?" asked the Interpreter.

"You bet we do," returned Bobby, without taking his gaze from the scene
before him, while Maggie confirmed her brother's words by turning to
look shyly at her new-found friend. "Pete and Charlie they work in the
Mill. Charlie he was a captain in the war. He's one of the head guys in
our union now. Mary she used to give us stuff to eat when dad was
a-strikin' the last time."

"An' look-ee," continued the boy, "right there next to the Martins' yer
can see the old house where Adam Ward used to live before the Mill made
him rich an' he moved to his big place up on the hill. I know 'cause I
heard dad an' another man talkin' 'bout it onct. Ain't nobody lives in
the old house now. She's all tumbled down with windows broke an'
everything. I wonder--" He paused to search the hillside to the east.
"Yep," he shouted, pointing, "there she is--there's the castle--there's
where old Adam an' his folks lives now. Some place to live I'd say.
Gee, but wouldn't I like to put a chunk o' danermite er somethin' under
there! I'd blow the whole darned thing into nothin' at all an that old
devil Adam with it. I'd--"

Little Maggie caught her warlike brother's arm. "But, Bobby--Bobby, yer
wouldn't dast to do that, yer know yer wouldn't!"

"Huh," returned the boy, scornfully. "I'd show yer if I had a chanct."

"But, Bobby, yer'd maybe kill the beautiful princess lady if yer was to
blow up the castle an' every-thin'."

"Aw shucks," returned the boy, shaking off his sister's hand with manly
impatience. "Couldn't I wait 'til she was away somewheres else 'fore I
touched it off? An', anyway, what if yer wonderful princess lady _was_
to git hurt, I guess she's one of 'em, ain't she?"

Poor Maggie, almost in tears, was considering this doubtful reassurance
when Bobby suddenly pointed again toward that pretentious estate on the
hillside, and cried in quick excitement: "Look-ee, Mag, there's a
autermobile a-comin' out from the castle, right now--see? She's a-goin'
down the hill toward town. Who'll yer bet it is? Old Adam Ward
his-self, heh?"

Little Maggie's face brightened joyously. "Maybe it's the princess
lady, Bobby."

"And who is this that you call the princess lady, Maggie?" asked the
Interpreter.

Bobby answered for his sister. "Aw, she means old Adam's daughter.
She's allus a-callin' her that an' a-makin' up stories about her."

"Oh, so you know Miss Helen Ward, too, do you?" The Interpreter was
surprised.

The boy turned his back on the landscape as though it held nothing more
of interest to him. "Naw, we've just seen her, that's all."

Stealing timidly back to the side of the wheel chair, the little girl
looked wistfully up into the Interpreter's face. "Do yer--do yer know
the princess lady what lives in the castle?" she asked.

The old basket maker, smiling down at her, answered, "Yes, dear, I have
known your princess lady ever since she was a tiny baby--much smaller
than you. And did you know, Maggie, that she was born in the old house
down there, next door to Charlie and Mary Martin?"

"An'--an' did she live there when she was--when she was as big as me?"

Bobby interrupted with an important "Huh, I know her brother John is a
boss in the Mill. He was in the war, too, with Captain Charlie. Did he
live in the old house when he was a kid?"

"Yes."

"An'--an' when the princess lady was little like me, an' lived in the
old house, did yer play with her?" asked Maggie.

The Interpreter laughed softly. "Yes, indeed, often. You see I worked
in the Mill, too, in those days, Maggie, with her father and Peter
Martin and--"

"That was when yer had yer real, sure-nuff legs, wasn't it?" the boy
interrupted.

"Yes, Bobby. And every Sunday, almost, I used to be at the old house
where the little princess lady lived, or at the Martin home next door,
and Helen and John and Charlie and Mary and I would always have such
good times together."

Little Maggie's face shone with appreciative interest. "An' did yer
tell them fairy stories sometimes?"

"Sometimes."

The little girl sighed and tried to get still closer to the man in the
wheel chair. "I like fairies, don't yer?"

"Indeed, I do," he answered heartily.

"Skinny and Chuck, they said yer tol' _them_ stories, too."

The Interpreter laughed quietly. "I expect perhaps I did."

"I don't suppose yer know any fairy stories right now, do yer?"

"Let me see," said the Interpreter, seeming to think very hard. "Why,
yes, I believe I do know one. It starts out like this: Once upon a time
there was a most beautiful princess, just like your princess lady, who
lived in a most wonderful palace. Isn't that the way for a fairy story
to begin?"

"Uh-huh, that's the way. An' then what happened?"

With a great show of indifference the boy drew near and stretched
himself on the floor on the other side of the old basket maker's chair.

"Well, this beautiful princess in the story, perhaps because she was so
beautiful herself, loved more than anything else in all the world to
have lots and lots of jewels. You know what jewels are, don't you?"

"Uh-huh, the princess lady she has 'em--heaps of 'em. I seen her onct
close, when she was a-gettin' into her autermobile, in front of one of
them big stores."

"Well," continued the story-teller, "it was strange, but with all her
diamonds and pearls and rubies and things there was _one_ jewel that
the princess did _not_ have. And, of course, she wanted that one
particular gem more than all the others. That is the way it almost
always is, you know."

"Huh," grunted Bobby.

"What was that there jewel she wanted?" asked Maggie.

"It was called the jewel of happiness," answered the Interpreter,
"because whoever possessed it was sure to be always as happy as happy
could be. And so, you see, because she did not have that particular
jewel the princess did not have as good times as such a beautiful
princess, living in such a wonderful palace, with so many lovely
things, really ought to have.

"But because this princess' heart was kind, a fairy appeared to her one
night, and told her that if she would go down to the shore of the great
sea that was not far from the castle, and look carefully among the
rocks and in the sand and dirt, she would find the jewel of happiness.
Then the fairy disappeared--poof! just like that."

Little Maggie squirmed with thrills of delight. "Some story, I'd say.
An' then what happened?"

"Why, of course, the very next day the princess went to walk on the
seashore, just as the fairy had told her. And, sure enough, among the
rocks and in the sand and dirt, she found hundreds and hundreds of
bright, shiny jewels. And she picked them up, and picked them up, and
picked them up, until she just couldn't carry another one. Then she
began to throw away the smaller ones that she had picked up at first,
and to hunt for larger ones to take instead. And then, all at once,
right there beside her, was a poor, ragged and crooked old woman, and
the old woman was picking up the ugly, dirt-colored pebbles that the
princess would not touch.

"'What are you doing, mother?' asked the beautiful princess, whose
heart was kind.

"And the crooked old woman answered, 'I am gathering jewels of
happiness on the shore of the sea of life.'

"'But those ugly, dirty pebbles are not jewels, mother,' said the lady.
'See, these are the jewels of happiness.' And she showed the poor,
ignorant old woman the bright, shiny stones that she had gathered.

"And the crooked old crone looked at the princess and laughed--a
curious, creepy, crawly, crooked laugh.

"Then the old woman offered to the princess one of the ugly,
dirt-colored pebbles that she had gathered. 'Take this, my dear,' she
croaked, 'and wear it, and you shall see that I am right--that this is
the jewel of happiness.'

"Now the beautiful princess did not want to wear that ugly,
dirt-colored stone--no princess would, you know. But, nevertheless,
because her heart was kind and she saw that the poor, crooked old woman
would feel very bad if her gift was not accepted, she took the dull,
common pebble and put it with the bright, shiny jewels that she had
gathered.

"And that very night the fairy appeared to the princess again.

"'Did you do as I told you?' the fairy asked. 'Did you look for the
jewel of happiness on the shore of the sea of life?'

"'Oh, yes,' cried the princess. 'And see what a world of lovely ones I
found!'

"The fairy looked at all the pretty, shiny stones that the princess had
gathered. 'And what is this?' the fairy asked, pointing to the ugly,
dirt-colored pebble.

"'Oh, that,' replied the princess, hanging her head in
embarrassment,--'that is nothing but a worthless pebble. A poor old
woman gave it to me to wear because she thinks it is beautiful.'

"'But you will not wear the ugly thing, will you?' asked the fairy.
'Think how every one would point at you, and laugh, and call you
strange and foolish.'

"'I know,' answered the princess, sadly, 'but I must wear it because I
promised, and because if I did not and the poor old lady should see me
without it, she would be so very, very unhappy.'

"And, would you believe it, no sooner had the beautiful princess said
those words than the fairy disappeared--poof! just like that! And right
there, on the identical spot where she had been, was that old ragged
and crooked woman.

"'Oh!' cried the princess.

"And the old woman laughed her curious, creepy, crawly, crooked laugh.
'Don't be afraid, my dear,' she said, 'you shall have your jewel of
happiness. But look!' She pointed a long, skinny, crooked finger at the
shiny jewels on the table and there, right before the princess' eyes,
they were all at once nothing but lumps of worthless dirt.

"'Oh!' screamed the princess again. 'All my lovely jewels of
happiness!'

"'But look,' said the old woman again, and once more pointed with her
skinny finger. And would you believe it, the princess saw that ugly,
dirt-colored pebble turn into the most wonderfully splendid jewel that
ever was--the true jewel of happiness.

"And so," concluded the Interpreter, "the beautiful princess whose
heart was kind lived happy ever after."

Little Maggie clapped her thin hands with delight.

"Gee," said Bobby, "wish I knowed where that there place was. I'd get
me enough of them there jewel things to swap for a autermobile an'
a--an' a flyin' machine."

"If you keep your eyes open, Bobby," answered the old basket maker,
"you will find the place all right. Only," he added, looking away
toward the big house on the hill, "you must be very careful not to make
the mistake that the princess lady is making--I mean," he corrected
himself with a smile, "you must be careful not to pick up only the
bright and shiny pebbles as the princess in the story did."

"Huh--I guess I'd know better'n that," retorted the boy. "Come on, Mag,
we gotter go."

"You will come to see me again, won't you?" asked the Interpreter, as
the children stood on the threshold. "You have legs, you know, that can
easily bring you."

"Yer bet we'll come," said Bobby, "won't we, Mag?"

The little girl, looking back at the man in the wheel chair, smiled.

      *       *       *       *       *

For some time after the children had gone the Interpreter sat very
still. His dark eyes were fixed upon the Mill with its tall, grim
stacks and the columns of smoke that twisted upward to form that
overshadowing cloud. The voices of the children, as they started down
the stairway to the dusty road and to their wretched home in the Flats,
came to him muffled and indistinct from under the cliff.

Perhaps the man in the wheel chair was thinking of the days when
Maggie's princess lady was a little girl and lived in the old house
next door to Mary and Charlie Martin. Perhaps his mind still dwelt on
the fairy story and the princess who found her jewel of happiness. It
may have been that he was listening to the droning, moaning voice of
the Mill, as one listens to the distant roar of the surf on a dangerous
coast.

With a weary movement he took the unfinished basket from the table and
began to work. But it was not his basket making that caused the
weariness of the Interpreter--it was not his work that put the light of
sorrow in his dark eyes.

      *       *       *       *       *

As Bobby and Maggie went leisurely down the zigzag steps, proud of
the tremendous success of their adventure, the boy paused several times
to execute an inspirational "stunt" that would in some degree express
his triumphant emotions.

"Gee!" he exulted. "Wait 'til I see Skinny and Chuck an' the rest of
the gang! Gee, won't I tell 'em! Just yer wait. I'll knock 'em dead.
Gee!"

On the bottom step they deliberately seated themselves as if they had
suddenly found the duty of leaving the charmed vicinity of that hut on
the cliff above impossible.

Suddenly, from around the curve in the road followed by a whirling
cloud of dust, came an automobile. It was a big car, very imposing with
its shiny black body, its gleaming metal, and its liveried chauffeur.

The children gazed in open-mouthed wonder. The car drew nearer, and
they saw, behind the dignified personality at the wheel, a lady who
might well have been the beautiful princess of the Interpreter's fairy
tale.

Little Maggie caught her brother's arm. "Bobby! It's--it's _her_--it's
the princess lady herself."

"Gee!" gasped the boy. "She's a slowin' down--what d'yer--"

The automobile stopped not thirty feet from where the children sat on
the lower step of the old stairway. Springing to the ground, the
chauffeur, with the dignity of a prime minister, opened the door.

But the princess lady sat motionless in her car. With an expression of
questioning disapproval she looked at the Interpreter's friends on that
lower step of the Interpreter's stairway.




CHAPTER II

LITTLE MAGGIE'S PRINCESS LADY


By nine out of ten of the Millsburgh people, the Interpreter would be
described as a strange character. But the judge once said to the
cigar-store philosopher, when that worthy had so spoken of the old
basket maker, "Sir, the Interpreter is more than a character; he is a
conviction, a conscience, an institution."

It was about the time when the patents on the new process were issued
that the Interpreter--or Wallace Gordon, as he was then known--appeared
from no one knows where, and went to work in the Mill. Because of the
stranger's distinguished appearance, his evident culture, and his
slightly foreign air, there were many who sought curiously to learn his
history. But Wallace Gordon's history remained as it, indeed, remains
still, an unopened book. Within a few months his ability to speak
several of the various languages spoken by the immigrants who were
drawn to the manufacturing city caused his fellow workers to call him
the Interpreter.

Working at the same bench in the Mill with Adam Ward and Peter Martin,
the Interpreter naturally saw much of the two families that, in those
days, lived such close neighbors. Sober, hard working, modest in his
needs, he acquired, during his first year in the Mill, that little plot
of ground on the edge of the cliff, and built the tiny hut with its
zigzag stairway. But often on a Sunday or a holiday, or for an hour of
the long evenings after work, this man who was so alone in the world
would seek companionship in the homes of his two workmen friends. The
four children, who were so much together that their mothers used to say
laughingly they could scarcely tell which were Wards and which were
Martins, claimed the Interpreter as their own. With his never-failing
fund of stories, his ultimate acquaintance with the fairies, his ready
understanding of their childish interests, and his joyous comradeship
in their sports, he won his own peculiar place in their hearts.

It was during the second year of his residence in Millsburgh that he
adopted the deaf and dumb orphan boy, Billy Rand.

That such a workman should become a leader among his fellow workers was
inevitable. More and more his advice and counsel were sought by those
who toiled under the black cloud that rolled up in ever-increasing
volumes from the roaring furnaces.

The accident which so nearly cost him his life occurred soon after the
new process had taken Adam from his bench to a desk in the office of
the Mill. Helen and John were away at school. At the hospital they
asked him about his people. He smiled grimly and shook his head. When
the surgeons were finally through with him, and it was known that he
would live but could never stand on his feet again, he was still silent
as to his family and his life before he came to the Mill. So they
carried him around by the road on the hillside to his little hut on the
top of the cliff where, with Billy Rand to help him, he made baskets
and lived with his books, which he purchased as he could from time to
time during the more profitable periods of his industry.

As the years passed and the Mill, under Adam Ward's hand, grew in
importance, Millsburgh experienced the usual trials of such industrial
centers. Periodic labor wars alternated with times of industrial peace.
Months of prosperity were followed by months of "hard times," and want
was in turn succeeded by plenty. When the community was at work the
more intelligent and thrifty among those who toiled with their hands
and the more conservative of those who labored in business were able to
put by in store enough to tide them over the next period of idleness
and consequent business depression.

From his hut on the cliff the Interpreter watched it all with
never-failing interest and sympathy. Indeed, although he never left his
work of basket making, the Interpreter was a part of it all. For more
and more the workers from the Mill, the shops and the factories, and
the workers from the offices and stores came to counsel with this
white-haired man in the wheel chair.

The school years of John and Helen, the new home on the hill, and all
the changes brought by Adam Ward's material prosperity separated the
two families that had once been so intimate. But, in spite of the wall
that the Mill owner had built between himself and his old workmen
comrades, the children of Adam Ward and the children of Peter Martin
still held the Interpreter in their hearts. To the man condemned to his
wheel chair and his basket making, little Maggie's princess lady was
still the Helen of the old house.

Sam Whaley's children sitting on the lower step of the zigzag stairway
that afternoon had no thought for the Interpreter's Helen of the old
house. Bobby's rapt attention was held by that imposing figure in
uniform. Work in the Mill when he became a man! Not much! Not as long
as there were automobiles like that to drive and clothes like those to
wear while driving them! Little Maggie's pathetically serious eyes saw
only the beautiful princess of the Interpreter's story--the princess
who lived in a wonderful palace and who because her heart was so kind
was told by the fairy how to find the jewel of happiness. Only this
princess lady did not look as though she had found her jewel of
happiness yet. But she would find it--the fairies would be sure to help
her because her heart was kind. How could any princess lady--so
beautiful, with such lovely clothes, and such a grand automobile, and
such a wonderful servant--how could any princess lady like that help
having a kind heart!

"Tom, send those dirty, impossible children away!"

The man touched his cap and turned to obey.

Poor little Maggie could not believe. It was not what the lady said; it
was the tone of her voice, the expression of her face, that hurt so.
The princess lady must be very unhappy, indeed, to look and speak like
that. And the tiny wisp of humanity, with her thin, stooping shoulders
and her tired little face--dirty, half clothed and poorly fed--felt
very sorry because the beautiful lady in the automobile was not happy.

But Bobby's emotions were of quite a different sort. Sam Whaley would
have been proud of his son had he seen the boy at that moment.
Springing to his feet, the lad snarled with all the menacing hate he
could muster, "Drive us away, will yer! I'd just like to see yer try it
on. These here are the Interpreter's steps. If the Interpreter lets us
come to see him, an' gives us cookies, an' tells us stories, I guess
we've got a right to set on his steps if we want to."

"Go on wid ye--git out o' here," said the man in livery. But Bobby's
sharp eyes saw what the lady in the automobile could not see--a faint
smile accompanied the chauffeur's attempt to obey his orders.

"Go on yerself," retorted the urchin, defiantly, "I'll go when I git
good an' ready. Ain't no darned rich folks what thinks they's so
grand--with all their autermobiles, an' swell drivers, 'n' things--can
tell _me_ what to do. I know her--she's old Adam Ward's daughter, she
is. An' she lives by grindin' the life out of us poor workin' folks,
that's what she does; 'cause my dad and Jake Vodell they say so. Yer
touch me an' yer'll see what'll happen to yer, when I tell Jake
Vodell."

Unseen by his mistress, the smile on the servant's face grew more
pronounced; and the small defender of the rights of the poor saw one of
the man's blue Irish eyes close slowly in a deliberate wink of good
fellowship. In a voice too low to be heard distinctly in the automobile
behind him, he said, "Yer all right, kid, but fer the love o' God beat
it before I have to lay hands on ye." Then, louder, he added gruffly,
"Get along wid ye or do ye want me to help ye?"

Bobby retreated in good order to a position of safety a little way down
the road where his sister was waiting for him.

With decorous gravity the imposing chauffeur went back to his place at
the door of the automobile.

"Gee!" exclaimed Bobby. "What do yer know about that! Old Adam Ward's
swell daughter a-goin' up to see the Interpreter. Gee!"

On the lower step of the zigzag stairway, with her hand on the railing,
the young woman paused suddenly and turned about. To the watching
children she must have looked very much indeed like the beautiful
princess of the Interpreter's fairy tale.

"Tom--" She hesitated and looked doubtfully toward the children.

"Yes, Miss."

"What was it that boy said about his rights?"

"He said, Miss, as how they had just been to visit the Interpreter an'
the old man give 'em cookies, and so they thought they was privileged
to sit on his steps."

A puzzled frown marred the really unusual loveliness of her face. "But
that was not all he said, Tom."

"No, Miss."

She looked upward to the top of the cliff where one corner of the
Interpreter's hut was just visible above the edge of the rock. And
then, as the quick light of a smile drove away the trouble shadows, she
said to the servant, "Tom, you will take those children for a ride in
the car. Take them wherever they wish to go, and return here for me. I
shall be ready in about an hour."

The man gasped. "But, Miss, beggin' yer pardon,--the car--think av the
upholsterin'--an' the dirt av thim little divils--beggin' yer pardon,
but 'tis ruined the car will be--an' yer gowns! Please, Miss, I'll give
them a dollar an' 'twill do just as well--think av the car!"

"Never mind the car, Tom, do as I say, please."

In spite of his training, a pleased smile stole over the Irish face of
the chauffeur; and there was a note of ungrudging loyalty and honest
affection in his voice as he said, touching his cap, "Yes, Miss, I will
have the car here in an hour--thank ye, Miss."

A moment later the young woman saw her car stop beside the wondering
children. With all his high-salaried dignity the chauffeur left the
wheel and opened the door as if for royalty itself.

The children stood as if petrified with wonder, although the boy was
still a trifle belligerent and suspicious.

In his best manner the chauffeur announced, "Miss Ward's compliments,
Sir and Miss, an' she has ordered me to place her automobile at yer
disposal if ye would be so minded as to go for a bit of a pleasure
ride."

"Oh!" gulped little Maggie.

"Aw, what are yer givin' us!" said Bobby.

The man's voice changed, but his manner was unaltered. "'Tis the truth
I'm a-tellin' ye, kids, wid the lady herself back there a-watchin' to
see that I carry out her orders. So hop in, quick, and don't keep her
a-waitin'."

"Gee!" exclaimed the boy.

Maggie looked at her brother doubtfully. "Dast we, Bobby? Dast we?"

"Dast we!--Huh! Who's afraid? I'll say we dast."

Another second and they were in the car. The chauffeur gravely touched
his cap. "An' where will I be drivin' ye, Sir?"

"Huh?"

"Where is it ye would like for to go?"

The two children looked at each other questioningly. Then a grin of
wild delight spread itself over the countenance of the boy and he
fairly exploded with triumphant glee, "Gee! Mag, now's our chance." To
the man he said, eagerly, "Just you take us all 'round the Flats,
mister, so's folks can see. An'--an', mind yer, toot that old horn good
an' loud, so as everybody'll know we're a-comin'." As the automobile
moved away he beamed with proud satisfaction. "Some swells we are--heh?
Skinny an' Chuck an' the gang'll be plumb crazy when they see us. Some
class, I'll tell the world."

"Well, why not?" demanded the cigar-stand philosopher, when Tom
described that triumphant drive of Sam Whaley's children through the
Flats. "Them kids was only doin' what we're all a-tryin' to do in one
way or another."

The lawyer, who had stopped for a light, laughed. "I heard the
Interpreter say once that 'to live on some sort of an elevation was to
most people one of the prime necessities of life.'"

"Sure," agreed the philosopher, reaching for another box for the
real-estate agent, "I'll bet old Adam Ward himself is just as human as
the rest of us if you could only catch him at it."

For some time after her car, with Bobby and Maggie, had disappeared in
its cloud of dust, among the wretched buildings of the Flats, Helen
stood there, on the lower step of the zigzag stairway, looking after
them. She was thinking, or perhaps she was wondering a little at
herself. She might even have been living again for the moment those
old-house days when, with her brother and Mary and Charlie Martin, she
had played there on these same steps.

Those old-house days had been joyous and carefree. Her school years,
too, had been filled with delightful and satisfying activities. After
her graduation she had been content with the gayeties and triumphs of
the life to which she had been arbitrarily removed by her father and
the new process, and for which she had been educated. She had felt the
need of nothing more. Then came the war, and, in her brother's
enlistment and in her work with the various departments of the women
forces at home, she had felt herself a part of the great world
movement. But now when the victorious soldiers--brothers and
sweethearts and husbands and friends--had returned, and the days of
excited rejoicing were past, life had suddenly presented to her a
different front. It would have been hard to find in all Millsburgh, not
excepting the most wretched home in the Flats, a more unhappy and
discontented person than this young woman who was so unanimously held
to have everything in the world that any one could possibly desire.

Slowly she turned to climb the zigzag stairway to the Interpreter's
hut.




CHAPTER III

THE INTERPRETER


The young woman announced her presence at the open door of the hut by
calling, "Are you there?"

The deep voice of the Interpreter answered, "Helen! Here I am,
child--on the porch. Come!" As she passed swiftly through the house and
appeared in the porch doorway, he added, "This is a happy surprise,
indeed. I thought you were not expected home for another month. It
seems ages since you went away."

She tried bravely to smile in response to the gladness in her old
friend's greeting. "I had planned to stay another month," she said,
"but I--" She paused as if for some reason she found it hard to explain
why she had returned to Millsburgh so long before the end of the summer
season. Then she continued slowly, as if remembering that she must
guard her words, "Brother wrote me that they were expecting serious
labor troubles, and with father as he is--" Her voice broke and she
finished lamely, "Mother is _so_ worried and unhappy. I--I felt that I
really ought not to be away."

She turned quickly and went to stand at the porch railing, where she
watched the cloud of dust that marked the progress of Bobby and Maggie
through the Flats.

"I can't understand father's condition at all," she said, presently,
without looking at the Interpreter. "He is so--so--" Again she paused
as if she could not find courage to speak the thought that so disturbed
her mind.

From his wheel chair the Interpreter silently watched the young woman
who was so envied by the people. And because the white-haired old
basket maker knew many things that were hidden from the multitude, his
eyes were as the eyes of the Master when He looked upon the rich young
ruler whom He loved.

Then, as if returning to a thought that had been interrupted by the
unwelcome intrusion of a forbidden subject, Helen said, "I can't
understand how you tolerate such dirty, rude and vicious little animals
as those two children."

The Interpreter smiled understandingly at the back of her very becoming
and very correctly fashioned hat. "You met my little friends, did you?"

"I did," she answered, with decided emphasis, "at the foot of your
stairs, and I was forced to listen to the young ruffian's very frank
opinion of me and of all that he is taught to believe I represent. I
wonder _you_ did not hear. But I suppose you can guess what he would
say."

"Yes," said the man in the wheel chair, gently, "I can guess Bobby's
opinion of you, quite as accurately as Bobby guesses your opinion of
him."

At that she turned on him with a short laugh that was rather more
bitter than mirthful. "Well, the little villain is guessing another
guess just now. I sent Tom to take them for a ride in the car."

"And why did you do that?"

She waited a little before she answered. "I don't know exactly. Perhaps
it was your Helen of the old house that did it. She may have been a
little ashamed of me and wanted to make it up to them. I am afraid I
really wasn't very kind at first."

"I see," said the Interpreter, gravely.

"There might possibly have been the shade of another reason," she
continued, after a moment, and there was a hint of bitterness in her
voice now.

"Yes?"

"Yes, it is conceivable, perhaps, that, in spite of the prevailing
opinions of such people, even _I_ might have felt a wee bit sorry for
the poor kiddies--especially for the girl. She is such a tiny,
tired-looking mite."

The old basket maker was smiling now, as he said, "I have known for a
long time that there were _two_ Helens. Little Maggie, it seems, has
found still another."

"How interesting!"

"Yes, Maggie has discovered, somehow, that you are really a beautiful
princess, living on most intimate terms with the fairies. She will
think so more than ever now."

The young woman laughed at this. "And the boy--what do you suppose _he_
will think after his ride with Tom in the limousine?"

The Interpreter shook his head doubtfully. "Bobby will probably reserve
his judgment for a while, on the possible chance of another ride in
your car."

"Tell me about them," said Helen.

"Are you really interested?"

She flushed a little as she answered, "I am at least curious."

"Why?"

"Perhaps because of your interest in them," she retorted. "Who are
they?"

The Interpreter did not answer for a moment; then, with his dark eyes
fixed on the heavy cloud of smoke that hung above the Mill and
overshadowed the Flats, he said, slowly, "They are Sam Whaley's
children. Their father works--when he works--in your father's Mill. I
knew both Sam and his wife before they were married. She was a bright
girl, with fine instincts for the best things of life and a capacity
for great happiness. Sam was a good worker in those days, and their
marriage promised well. Then he became interested in the wrong sort of
what is called socialism, and began to associate with a certain element
that does not value homes and children very highly. The man is honest,
and fairly capable, up to a certain point; but there never was much
capacity there for clear thinking. He is one of those who always follow
the leader who yells the loudest and he mistakes vituperation for
argument. He is strong on loyalty to class, but is not so particular as
he might be when it comes to choosing his class. And so, for several
years now, in every little difference between the workmen and the
management, Sam has been too ready to quit his job and let his wife and
children go hungry for the good of the cause, while he vociferates
loudly against the cruelty of all who refuse to offer their families as
sacrifice on the altar of his particular and impracticable ideas."

"And his wife--the mother of his children--the girl with fine instincts
for the best things and a capacity for great happiness--what of her?"
demanded Helen.

The Interpreter pointed toward the Flats. "She lives down there," he
said, sadly. "You have seen her children."

The young woman turned again to the porch railing and looked down on
the wretched dwellings of the Flats below.

"It is strange," she said, presently, as if speaking to herself, "but
that poor woman makes me think of mother. Mother is like that, isn't
she? I mean," she added, quickly, "in her instincts and in her capacity
for happiness."

"Yes," agreed the Interpreter, "your mother is like that."

She faced him once more, to say thoughtfully, but with decisive warmth,
"It is a shame the way such children--I mean the children of such
people as this man Whaley--are being educated in lawlessness. Those
youngsters are nothing less than juvenile anarchists. They will grow up
a menace to our government, to society, to our homes, and to everything
that is decent and right. They are taught to hate work. And they fairly
revel in their hatred of every one and every thing that is not of their
own miserable class."

There was a note of gentle authority in the Interpreter's deep voice,
and in his dark eyes there was a look of patient sorrow, as he replied,
"Yes, Helen, all that you say of our Bobbies and Maggies is true. But
have you ever considered whether it might not be equally true of the
children of wealth?"

"Is the possession of what we call wealth a crime?" the young woman
asked, bitterly. "Is poverty _always_ such a virtue?"

The Interpreter answered, "I mean, child, that wealth which comes
unearned from the industries of life--that wealth for which no service
is rendered--for which no equivalent in human strength, mental or
physical, is returned. Are not the children of such conditions being
educated in lawlessness when the influence of their money so often
permits them to break our laws with impunity? Are they not a menace to
our government when they coerce and bribe our public servants to enact
laws and enforce measures that are for the advantage of a few favored
ones and against the welfare of our people as a whole? Are they not a
menace to society when they would limit the meaning of the very word to
their own select circles and cliques? Are they not a menace to our
homes by the standards of morals that too often govern their daily
living? For that hatred of class taught the Bobbies and Maggies of the
Flats, Helen, these other children are taught an intolerance and
contempt for everything that is not of their class--an intolerance and
contempt that breed class hatred as surely as blow flies breed
maggots."

For some time the silence was broken only by the dull, droning voice of
the Mill. They listened as they would have listened to the first low
moaning of the wind that might rise later into a destructive storm.

The Interpreter spoke again. "Helen, this nation cannot tolerate one
standard of citizenship for one class and a totally different standard
for another. Whatever is right for the children of the hill, yonder, is
right for the children of the Flats, down there."

Helen asked, abruptly, "Is there any truth in all this talk about
coming trouble with the labor unions?"

The man in the wheel chair did not answer immediately. Then he replied,
gravely, with another question, "And who is it that says there is going
to be trouble again, Helen?"

"John says everybody is expecting it. And Mr. McIver is so sure that he
is already preparing for it at his factory. _He_ says it will be the
worst industrial war that Millsburgh has ever experienced--that it must
be a fight to the finish this time--that nothing but starvation will
bring the working classes to their senses."

"Yes," agreed the Interpreter, thoughtfully, "McIver would say just
that. And many of our labor agitators would declare, in exactly the
same spirit, that nothing but the final and absolute downfall of the
employer class can ever end the struggle. I wonder what little Bobby
and Maggie Whaley and their mother would say if they could have their
way about it, Helen?"

Helen Ward's face flushed as she said in a low, deliberate voice,
"Father agrees with Mr. McIver--you know how bitter he is against the
unions?"

"Yes, I know."

"But John says that Mr. McIver, with his talk of force and of starving
helpless women and children, is as bad as this man Jake Vodell who has
come to Millsburgh to organize a strike. It is really brother's
attitude toward the workmen and their unions and his disagreement with
Mr. McIver's views that make father as--as he is."

The Interpreter's voice was gentle as he asked, "Your father is not
worse, is he, Helen? I have heard nothing."

"Oh, no," she returned, quickly. "That is--"

She hesitated, then continued, with careful exactness, "For a time he
even seemed much better. When I went away he was really almost like his
old self. But this labor situation and John's not seeing things exactly
as he does worries him. The doctors all agree, you know, that father
must give up everything in the nature of business and have absolute
mental rest; but he insists that in the face of this expected trouble
with the workmen he dares not trust the management of the Mill wholly
to John, because of what he calls brother's wild and impracticable
ideas. Everybody knows how father has given his life to building up the
Mill. And now, he--he--It is terrible the way he is about things. Poor
mother is almost beside herself." The young woman's eyes filled and her
lips trembled.

The man in the wheel chair turned to the unfinished basket on the table
beside him and handled his work aimlessly, as if in sorrow that he had
no word of comfort for her.

When Adam Ward's daughter spoke again there was a curious note of
defiance in her voice, but her eyes, when the Interpreter turned to
look at her, were fixed upon her old friend with an expression of
painful anxiety and fear. "Of course his condition is all due to his
years of hard work and to the mental and nervous strain of his
business. It--it couldn't be anything else, could it?"

The Interpreter, who seemed to be watching the intricate and constantly
changing forms that the columns of smoke from the tall stacks were
shaping, apparently did not hear.

"Don't--don't you think it is all because of his worry over the Mill?"

"Yes, Helen," the Interpreter answered, at last, "I am sure your
father's trouble all comes from the Mill."

For a while she did not speak, but sat looking wistfully toward the
clump of trees that shaded her birthplace and the white cottage where
Peter Martin lived with Charlie and Mary.

Then she said, musingly, "How happy we all were in the old house, when
father worked in the Mill with you and Uncle Pete, and you used to come
for Sunday dinner with us. Do you know, sometimes"--she hesitated as if
making a confession of which she was a little ashamed--"sometimes--that
is, since brother came home from France, I--I almost hate it. I think I
feel just as mother does, only neither of us dares admit it--scarcely
even to ourselves."

"You almost hate what, Helen?"

"Oh, everything--the way we live, the people we know, the stupid things
I am expected to do. It all seems so useless--so futile--so--so--such a
waste of time."

The Interpreter was studying her with kindly interest.

"I never felt this way before brother went away. And during the war
everybody was so much excited and interested, helping in every way he
or she could. But now--now that it is over and John is safely home
again, I can't seem to get back into the old ways at all. Life seems to
have flattened out into a dull, monotonous round of nothing that really
matters."

The Interpreter spoke, thoughtfully, "Many people, I find, feel that
way these days, Helen."

"As for brother," she continued, "he is so changed that I simply can't
understand him at all. He is like a different man--just grinds away in
that dirty old Mill day after day, as if he were nothing more than a
common laborer who had to work or starve. In fact," she finished with
an air of triumph, "that is exactly what he says he is--simply a
laborer like--like Charlie Martin and the rest of them."

The Interpreter smiled.

"It was all very well for John and Charlie Martin to be buddies, as
they call it, during the war," she went on. "It was different over
there in France. But now that it is all over and they are home again,
and Captain Martin has gone back to his old work in the Mill where John
has practically become the manager, there is no sense in brother's
keeping up the intimacy. Really I don't wonder that father is worried
almost to death over it all. I suppose the next thing John will be
chumming with this Jake Vodell himself."

"I don't suppose you see much of your old friends the Martins these
days, do you, Helen?" said the old basket maker, reflectively.

She retorted quickly with an air, "Certainly not."

"But I remember, in the old-house days, before you went away to school,
you and Charlie Martin were--"

She interrupted him with "I was a silly child. I suppose every girl at
about that age has to have her foolish little romance."

And the Interpreter saw that her cheeks were crimson.

"A young girl's first love is not in the least silly or foolish, my
dear," he said.

She made an effort to speak lightly. "Well, fortunately, mine did not
last long."

"I know," he returned, "but I thought perhaps because of the friendship
between John and the Captain--"

"I could scarcely see much of one of the common workmen in my father's
mill, could I?" she asked, warmly. "I must admit, though," she added,
with an odd note in her voice, "that I admire his good sense in never
accepting John's invitations to the house."

And then, suddenly, to the consternation of her companion, her eyes
filled with tears.

The Interpreter looked away toward the beautiful country beyond the
squalid Plats, the busy city, the smoke-clouded Mill.

There was a sound of some one knocking at the front door of the hut.
Through the living room Helen saw her chauffeur.

"Yes, Tom," she called, "I am coming."

To the Interpreter she said, hurriedly, "I have really stayed longer
than I should. I promised mother that I would be home early. She is so
worried about father, I do not like to leave her, but I felt that I
must see you. I--I haven't said at all the things I--wanted to say.
Father--" She looked at the man in the wheel chair appealingly, as she
hesitated again with the manner of one who feels compelled to speak,
yet fears to betray a secret. "You feel sure, don't you, that father's
condition is nothing more than the natural result of his nervous
breakdown and his worry over business?"

The Interpreter thought how like the look in her eyes was to the look
in the eyes of timid little Maggie. And again he waited, before
answering, "Yes, Helen, I am sure that your father's trouble is all
caused by the Mill. Is there anything that I can do, child?"

"There is nothing that any one can do, I fear," she returned, with a
little gesture of hopelessness. Then, avoiding the grave, kindly eyes
of the old basket maker, she forced herself to say, in a tone that was
little more than a whisper, "I sometimes think--at tines I am almost
compelled to believe that there _is_ something more--something that
we--that no one knows about." With sudden desperate earnestness she
went on with nervous haste as if she feared her momentary courage would
fail. "I can't explain--but it is as if he were hiding something and
dreaded every moment that it would be discovered. He is so--so afraid.
Can it be possible that there is something that we do not know--some
hidden thing?" And then, before the Interpreter could speak, she
exclaimed, with a forced laugh of embarrassment, "How silly of me to
talk like this--you will think that I am going insane."


When he was alone, the Interpreter turned again to his basket making.
"Yes, Billy," he said aloud as his deaf and dumb companion appeared in
the doorway a few minutes later, "yes, Billy, she will find her jewel
of happiness. But it will not be easy, Billy--it will not be easy."

To which, of course, Billy made no reply. And that--the Interpreter
always maintained--was one of the traits that made his companion such a
delightful conversationalist. He invariably found your pet arguments
and theories unanswerable, and accepted your every assertion without
question.


Helen Ward could not feel that her father's condition--much as it
alarmed and distressed her--was, in itself, the reason of her own
unrest and discontent. She felt, rather, in a vague, instinctive way,
that the source of her parent's trouble was somehow identical with the
cause of her own unhappiness. But what was it that caused her father's
affliction and her own dissatisfied and restless mental state? The
young woman questioned herself in vain.

Pausing at one of the turns in the stairway, she stood for some time
looking at the life that lay before her, as though wondering if the
answer to her questions might not be found somewhere in that familiar
scene.

But the Mill, with its smoking stacks and the steady song of its
industry, had no meaning for her. The dingy, dust-veiled Flats spoke a
language that she was not schooled to understand. The farms of the
valley beyond the river, so beautiful in their productiveness, were as
meaningless to her as the life on some unknown planet. To her the busy
city with its varied interests was without significance. The many homes
on the hillside held, for her, nothing. And yet as she looked she was
possessed of a curious feeling that everything in that world before her
eyes was occupied with some definite purpose--was living to some fixed
end--was a part of life--belonged to life. Below her, on the road at
the foot of the cliffs, an old negro with an ancient skeleton of a
horse and a shaky wreck of a wagon was making slow progress toward the
Flats. To Helen, even this poor creature was going somewhere--to some
definite place--on some definite mission. She felt strangely alone.

In those years of the war Adam Ward's daughter, like many thousands of
her class, had been inevitably forced into a closer touch with life
than she had ever known before. She had felt, as never before, the
great oneness of humanity. She had sensed a little the thrilling power
of a great human purpose. Now it was as though life ignored her, passed
her by. She felt left out, overlooked, forgotten.

Slowly she went on down the zigzag stairway to her waiting automobile.

As she entered her car, the chauffeur looked at her curiously. When she
gave him no instructions, he asked, quietly, "Home, Miss?"

She started. "Yes, Tom."

The man was in his place at the wheel when she added, "Did those
children enjoy their ride, Tom?"

"That they did, Miss--it was the treat of their lives."

Little Maggie's princess lady smiled wistfully--almost as Maggie
herself might have smiled.

As the car was moving slowly away from the foot of the old stairway,
she spoke again. "Tom!"

"Yes, Miss."

"You may drive around by the old house, please."




CHAPTER IV

PETER MARTIN AT HOME


Peter Martin, with his children, Charlie and Mary, lived in the oldest
part of Millsburgh, where the quiet streets are arched with great trees
and the modest houses, if they seem to lack in modern smartness, more
than make good the loss by their air of homelike comfort. The Martin
cottage was built in the days before the success of Adam Ward and his
new process had brought to Millsburgh the two extremes of the Flats and
the hillside estates. The little home was equally removed from the
wretched dwellings of Sam Whaley and his neighbors, on the one hand,
and from the imposing residences of Adam Ward and his circle, on the
other.

The house--painted white, with old-fashioned green shutters--is only a
story and a half, with a low wing on the east, and a bit of porch in
front, with wooden seats on either side the door. The porch step is a
large uncut stone that nature shaped to the purpose, and the walk that
connects the entrance with the front gate is of the same untooled flat
rock. On the right of the walk, as one enters, a space of green lawn, a
great tree, and rustic chairs invite one to rest in the shade; while on
the left, the yard is filled with old-fashioned flowers, and a row of
flowering shrubs and bushes extends the full width of the lot along the
picket fence which parallels the board walk of the tree-bordered
street. The fence, like the house, is painted white.

The other homes in the neighborhood are of the same modest, well kept
type.

The only thing that marred the quiet domestic beauty of the scene at
the time of this story was the place where Adam Ward had lived with his
little family before material prosperity removed them to their estate
on the hill. Joining the Martin home on the east, the old house,
unpainted, with broken shutters, shattered windows, and sagging porch,
in its setting of neglected, weed-grown yard and tumble-down fences,
was pathetic in its contrast.

Since the death of her mother, Mary Martin had been the housekeeper for
her father and her brother. She was a wholesome, clear-visioned girl,
with an attractive face that glowed with the good color of health and
happiness. And if at times, when the Ward automobile passed, there was
a shadow of wistfulness in Mary's eyes, it did not mar for long the
expression of her habitually contented and cheerful spirit. She worked
at her household tasks with a song, entered into the pleasures of her
friends and neighbors with hearty delight, and was known, as well, to
many poverty-stricken homes in the Flats in times of need.

More than one young workman in the Mill had wanted Pete Martin's girl
to help him realize his dreams of home building. But Mary had always
answered "No."

Mary's brother Charlie was a strong-shouldered, athletic workman, with
a fine, clean countenance and the bearing of his military experience.

At supper, that evening, the young woman remarked casually, "Helen Ward
went by this afternoon. I was working in the roses. I thought for a
moment she was going to stop--at the old house, I mean."

Captain Charlie's level gaze met his sister's look. "Did she see you?"

"She did and she didn't," replied Mary.

"Never mind, dear," returned the soldier workman, "it'll be all right."

Peter Martin--a gray-haired veteran with rather a stolid English
face--looked up at his children questioningly. Presently he said, "It's
a wonder Adam wouldn't fix up the old place a bit--for pride's sake if
for nothing else. It's a disgrace to the neighborhood."

"I guess that's the reason he lets it go," said Captain Charlie,
pushing his chair back from the table.

"What's the reason?" asked Peter.

"For his pride's sake. As it stands now, the old house advertises
Adam's success. When people see it in ruins like that they always speak
of the big new house on the hill. If the old house was fixed up and
occupied it wouldn't cause any comment on Adam's prosperity, you see.
John told me once that he had begged his father to let him do something
with it, but Adam ordered him never to set foot on the place."

"Well," said Mary, "I suppose he can afford to keep the old house as a
sort of monument if he wants to."

Peter Martin commented, in his slow way, "If Charlie is right about his
reason for leaving it as it is, I am not so sure, daughter, that even
Adam Ward can afford to do such a thing."

Captain Charlie's eyes twinkled as he addressed his sister. "Father
evidently believes with the Interpreter that houses have souls or
spirits or something--like human beings."

"Of course," she returned, "if the Interpreter believes it father is
bound to."

The old workman smiled. "You children will believe it, too, some day;
at least I hope so."

"I wonder if Helen ever goes to see the Interpreter," said Mary.

Captain Charlie returned, quickly, "I know she does."

"How do you know? Did you ever meet her there?"

The Captain answered grimly, "I hid out in the garden once with Billy
Rand to keep from meeting her."

Flushed with the unparalleled adventures of the day, Bobby Whaley asked
his father, "Dad, ain't the old Interpreter one of us?--ain't he?"

"Sure he is."

"Well, then, what for did old Adam Ward's daughter go to see him just
like Mag an' me did?"

"I don't know nothin' about that," growled Sam Whaley, "but I can tell
you kids one thing. You're a-goin' to stay out of that there automobile
of hers. You let me catch you takin' up with such as Adam Ward's
daughter and I'll teach you somethin' you won't fergit."

      *       *       *       *       *

The cigar-store philosopher remarked casually to the chief of police,
"This here savior of the people, Jake Vodell, that's recently descended
upon us, is gatherin' to himself a choice bunch of disciples--I'll tell
the world."

"What do you know about it?" demanded the officer of the law.

The philosopher grinned. "Oh, they most of them smoke or chew, the same
as your cops. Vodell himself smokes your brand. Have one on me chief."




CHAPTER V

ADAM WARD'S ESTATE


In spite of that smile of mingled admiration, contempt and envy, with
which the people always accompanied any mention of Adam Ward,
Millsburgh took no little pride in the dominant Mill owner's
achievements. In particular, was the Ward home, most pretentious of all
the imposing estates on the hillside, an object of never-failing
interest and conversational speculation. "Adam Ward's castle," the
people called it, smiling. And no visiting stranger of any importance
whatever could escape being driven past that glaring architectural
monstrosity which stood so boldly on its most conspicuous hillside
elevation and proclaimed so defiantly to all the world its owner's
material prosperity.

But the sight-seers always viewed the "castle" and the "palatial
grounds" (the Millsburgh _Clarion_, in a special Sunday article for
which Adam paid, so described the place) through a strong, ornamental
iron fence, with a more than ornamental gate guarded by massive stone
columns. Only when the visiting strangers were of sufficient importance
in the owner's eyes were they permitted to pass the conspicuous PRIVATE
PROPERTY, NO ADMITTANCE sign at the entrance. As the cigar-stand
philosopher explained, Adam Ward did not propose to give anything away.

The chief value of his possessions, in Adam's thoughts, lay in the fact
that they were _his_. He always said, "_My_ house--_my_ grounds--_my_
flowers--_my_ trees--_my_ fountain--_my_ fence." He even extended his
ownership and spoke of the very birds who dared to ignore the PRIVATE
PROPERTY, No ADMITTANCE sign as _my_ birds. So marked, indeed, was this
characteristic habit of his speech, that no one in Millsburgh would
have been surprised to hear him say, "_My_ sun--_my_ moonlight." And
never did he so forget himself as to include his wife and children in
such an expression as "our home." Why, indeed, should he? His wife and
his children were as much _his_ as any of the other items on the long
list of the personal possessions which he had so industriously
acquired.

In perfect harmony with the principles that ordered his life, the owner
of the castle made great show of hospitality at times. But the
recipients of his effusive welcome were invariably those from whom, or
through whom, he had reason to think he might derive a definite
material gain in return for his graciousness. The chief entertainment
offered these occasional utilitarian guests was a verbal catalogue of
the estate, with an itemized statement of the cost of everything
mentioned. If the architecture of the house was noticed, Adam proudly
disclaimed any knowledge of architecture, but named the architect's
fee, and gave the building cost in detail, from the heating system to
the window screens. If one chanced to betray an interest in a flower or
shrub or tree, he boasted that he could not name a plant on the place,
and told how many thousands he had paid the landscape architect, and
what it cost him each year to maintain the lawns and gardens. If the
visitor admired the fountain or the statuary he declared--quite
unnecessarily--that he knew nothing of art, but had paid the various
artists represented various definite dollars and cents. And never was
there a guest of that house that poor Adam did not seek to discredit to
his family and to other guests, lest by any chance any one should fail
to recognize the host's superiority.

In his youth the Mill owner had received from his parents certain
exaggerated religious convictions as to the desirability of gaining
heaven and escaping, hell when one's years of material gains and losses
should be forever past. Therefore, his spiritual life, also, was wholly
a matter of personal bargain and profit. The church was an insurance
corporation, of a sort, to which he paid his dues, as he paid the
premiums on his policies in other less pretentious companies. As a
matter of additional security--which cost nothing in the way of
additional premiums--he never failed to say grace at the table.

This matter of grace, Adam found, was also a character asset of no
little value when there were guests whom he, for good material reasons,
wished to impress with the fine combination of business ability and
sterling Christian virtue that so distinguished his simple and sincere
nature. Profess yourself the disinterested friend of a man--make him
believe that you value his friendship for its own sake and, on that
ground, invite him to your home as your honored guest. And then, when
he sits at your table, ask God to bless the food, the home, and the
guest, and you have unquestionably maneuvered your friend into a
position where he will contribute liberally to your business
triumphs--if your contracts are cleverly drawn and you strike for the
necessary signature while the glow of your generous hospitality is
still warm.

And thus, with his patented process and his cleverly drawn contracts,
this man had reaped from hospitality, religion and friendship the
abundant gains that made him the object of his neighbors' admiration,
contempt and envy.

But the end of Adam Ward's material harvest day was come. As Helen had
told the Interpreter, the doctors were agreed that her father must give
up everything in the nature of business and have absolute mental rest.
The Mill owner must retire.

Retire! Retire to what?

The world of literature--of history and romance, of poetry and the
lives of men--the world of art, with its magic of color and form--the
world of music, with its power to rest the weary souls of men--the
world of nature, that with its myriad interests lay about him on every
side--the world of true friendships, with their inspiring sympathies
and unselfish love--in these worlds there is no place for Adam Wards.

Retire! Retire to what?

      *       *       *       *       *

One afternoon, a few days after her visit to the Interpreter, Helen sat
with a book in a little vine-covered arbor, in a secluded part of the
grounds, some distance from the house. She had been in the quiet
retreat an hour, perhaps, when her attention was attracted by the sound
of some one approaching. Through a tiny opening in the lattice and vine
wall she saw her father.

Adam Ward apparently was on his way to the very spot his daughter had
chosen, and the young woman smiled to herself as she pictured his
finding her there. But a moment before the seemingly inevitable
discovery, the man turned aside to a rustic seat in the shade of a
great tree not far away.

Helen was about to reveal her presence by calling to him when something
in her father's manner caused her to hesitate. Through the leafy screen
of the arbor wall she saw him stop beside the bench and look carefully
about on every side, as if to assure himself that he was alone. The
young woman flushed guiltily, but, as if against her will, she remained
silent. As she watched her father's face, a feeling of pity, fear and
wonder held her breathless.

Helen had often seen her father suffering under an attack of nervous
excitement. She had witnessed his spells of ungoverned rage that left
him white and trembling with exhaustion. She had known his fears that
he tried so hard to hide. She knew of his sleepless nights, of his
dreams of horror, of his hours of lonely brooding. But never had she
seen her father like this. It was as if Adam Ward, believing himself
unobserved, let fall the mask that hid his secret self from even those
who loved him most. Sinking down upon the bench, he groaned aloud,
while his daughter, looking upon that huddled figure of abject misery
and despair, knew that she was witnessing a mental anguish that could
come only from some source deep hidden beneath the surface of her
father's life. She could not move. As one under some strange spell, she
was helpless.

The doctors had said--diplomatically--that Adam Ward's ill health was a
nervous trouble, resulting from his lifelong devotion to his work, with
no play spell or rest, and no relief through interest in other things.
But Adam Ward knew the real reason for the medical men's insistent
advice that he retire from the stress of the Mill to the quiet of his
estate. He knew it from his wife's anxious care and untiring
watchfulness. He knew it from the manner of his business associates
when they asked how he felt. He knew when, at some trivial incident or
word, he would be caught, helpless, in the grip of an ungovernable rage
that would leave him exhausted for many weary, brooding hours. He felt
it in the haunting, unconquerable fears that beset him--by the feeling
of some dread presence watching him--by the convictions that unknown
enemies were seeking his life--by his terrifying dreams of the hell of
his inherited religion.

And the real reason for his condition Adam Ward knew. It was not the
business to which he had driven himself so relentlessly. It was not
that he had no other interests to take his mind from the Mill. It was a
thing that he had fought, in secret, almost every hour of every year of
his accumulating successes. It was a thing which his neighbors and
associates and family felt in his presence but could not name--a thing
which made him turn his eyes away from a frank, straightforward look
and forbade him to look his fellows in the face save by an exertion of
his will.

Through the vines, Helen saw her father stoop to pick from the ground a
few twigs that had escaped the eyes of the caretakers. Deliberately he
broke the twigs into tiny bits, and threw the pieces one by one aside.
His gray face, drawn and haggard, twitched and worked with the nervous
stress of his thoughts. From under his heavy brows he glanced with the
quick, furtive look of a hunted thing, as though fearing some enemy
that might be hidden in the near-by shrubbery. The young woman,
shrinking from the look in his eyes, and not daring to make her
presence known, remembered, suddenly, how the Interpreter had been
reluctant to discuss her father's illness.

Casting aside the last tiny bit of the twig which he had broken so
aimlessly, he found another and continued his senseless occupation.

With pity and love in her heart, Helen wanted to go to him--to help
him, but she could not--some invisible presence seemed to forbid.

Suddenly Adam raised his head. A moment he listened, then cautiously he
rose to his feet--listening, listening. It was no trick of his fancy
this tune. He could hear voices on the other side of a dense growth of
shrubbery near the fence. Two people were talking. He could not
distinguish the words but he could hear distinctly the low murmur of
their voices.

Helen, too, heard the voices and looked in that direction. From her
position in the arbor she could see the speakers. With the shadow of a
quick smile, she turned her eyes again toward her father. He was
looking about cautiously, as if to assure himself that he was alone.
The shadow of a smile vanished from Helen's face as she watched in
wondering fear.

Stooping low, Adam Ward crept swiftly to a clump of bushes near the
spot from which the sound of the voices came. Crouching behind the
shrubbery, he silently parted the branches and peered through. Bobby
and Maggie Whaley stood on the outer side of the fence with their
little faces thrust between the iron pickets, looking in.


Still in the glow of their wonderful experience at the Interpreter's
hut and the magnificent climax of that day's adventure, the children
had determined to go yet farther afield. It was true that their father
had threatened dire results if they should continue the acquaintance
begun at the foot of the Interpreter's zigzag stairway, but, sufficient
unto the day.--They would visit the great castle on the hill where
their beautiful princess lady lived. And, who could tell, perhaps they
might see her once more. Perhaps--"But that," said tiny Maggie, "was
too wonderful ever to happen again."

The way had been rather long for bare little feet. But excited hope had
strengthened them. And so they had climbed the hill, and had come at
last to the iron fence through which they could see the world of bright
flowers and clean grass and shady trees, and, in the midst of it all,
the big house. With their hungry little faces thrust between the strong
iron pickets, Sam Whaley's children feasted their eyes on the beauties
of Adam Ward's possessions. Even Bobby, in his rapture over the
loveliness of the scene, forgot for the moment his desire to blow up
the castle, with its owner and all.

Behind his clump of shrubbery, Adam Ward, crouching like some stealthy
creature of the jungle, watched and listened.

From the shelter of the arbor, Adam Ward's daughter looked upon the
scene with white-faced interest.

"Gee," said Bobby, "some place, I'd say!"

"Ain't it pretty?" murmured little Maggie. "Just like them places where
the fairies live."

"Huh," returned the boy, "old Adam Ward, he ain't no fairy I'm
a-tellin' yer."

To which Maggie, hurt by this suggested break in the spell of her
enchantment, returned indignantly, "Well, I guess the fairies can live
in all them there pretty flowers an' things just the same, if old Adam
does own 'em. You can't shut fairies out with no big iron fences."

"That's so," admitted Bobby. "Gee, I wisht we was fairies, so's we
could sneak in! Gee, wouldn't yer like ter take a roll on that there
grass?"

"Huh," returned the little girl, "I know what I'd do if I was a fairy.
I'd hide in that there bunch of flowers over there, an' I'd watch till
the beautiful princess lady with the kind heart come along, an' I'd
tell her where she could find them there jewels of happiness what the
Interpreter told us about."

"Do yer reckon she's in the castle there, right now?" asked Bobby.

"I wonder!" murmured Maggie.

"Betcher can't guess which winder is hern."

"Bet I kin; it's that there one with all them vines around it. Princess
ladies allus has vines a-growin' 'roun' their castle winders--so's when
the prince comes ter rescue 'em he kin climb up."

"Wisht she'd come out."

"I wish--"

Little Maggie's wish was never expressed, for at that moment, from
behind that near-by clump of shrubbery a man sprang toward them, his
face distorted with passion and his arms tossing in threatening
gestures.

The children, too frightened to realize the safety of their position on
the other side of those iron bars, stood speechless. For the moment
they could neither cry out nor run.

"Get out!" Adam Ward yelled, hoarse with rage, as he would have driven
off a trespassing dog. "Get out! Go home where you belong! Don't you
know this is private property? Do you think I am keeping a circus here
for all the dirty brats in the country to look at? Get out, I tell you,
or I'll--"

With frantic speed the two children fled down the hill.

Adam Ward laughed--laughed until he was forced to hold his sides and
the tears of his ungodly mirth rolled down his cheeks.

But such laughter is a fearful thing to see. White and trembling with
the shame and the horror of it, Helen crouched in her hiding place, not
daring even to move. She felt, as never before, the presence of that
spirit which possessed her father and haunted her home. It was as if
the hidden thing of which she had forced herself to speak to the
Interpreter were suddenly about to materialize before her eyes. She
wanted to scream--to cry aloud her fear--to shriek her protest--but
sheer terror held her motionless and dumb.

The spell was broken by Mrs. Ward who, from somewhere in the grounds,
was calling, "Adam! Oh-h, Adam!"

The man heard, and Helen saw him controlling his laughter, and looking
cautiously about.

Again the call came, and there was an anxious note in the voice.
"Adam--father--Oh-h, father, where are you?"

With a cruel grin still twisting his gray face, Adam slunk behind a
clump of bushes.

Helen Ward crept from her hiding place and, keeping the little arbor
between herself and her father, stole away through the grounds. When
she was beyond his hearing, she almost ran, as if to escape from a spot
accursed.




CHAPTER VI

ON THE OLD ROAD


When Bobby and Maggie Whaley fled from the immediate vicinity of Adam
Ward's estate, they were beside themselves with fear--blind,
unreasoning, instinctive fear.

There is a fear that is reasonable--that is born of an intelligent
comprehension of the danger that menaces, and there is a fear that is
born of ignorance--of inability to understand the nature of the danger.
These children of the Flats had nothing in their little lives by which
they might know the owner of the Mill, or visualize the world in which
the man for whom their father worked lived. To Bobby and Maggie the
home of Adam Ward was a place of mystery, as far removed from the world
of their actualities as any fabled castle in fairyland could possibly
be.

Sam Whaley's distorted views of all employers in the industrial world,
and his fanatical ideas of class loyalty, were impressed with weird
exaggeration upon the fertile minds of his children. From their
father's conversation with his workmen neighbors, and from the
suggestive expressions and epithets which Sam had gleaned from the
literature upon which he fed his mind and which he used with such
gusto, Bobby and Maggie had gathered the material out of which they had
created an imaginary monster, capable of destroying them with fiendish
delight. They had seen angry men too often to be much disturbed by mere
human wrath. But, to them, this Adam Ward who had appeared so suddenly
from the shrubbery was more than a man; he was all that they had been
taught to believe--a hideous thing of more dreadful power and sinister
purpose than could be imagined.

With all their strength they ran down the old hill road toward the
world of the Flats where they belonged. They dared not even look over
their shoulders. The very ground seemed to drag at their feet to hold
them back. Then little Maggie stumbled and fell. Her frantic screams
reached Bobby, who was a few feet in advance, and the boy stopped
instantly and faced about, with terror in his eyes but with evident
determination to defend his sister at any cost.

When he had pulled Maggie to her feet, and it was certain that there
was nothing pursuing them, Bobby, boylike, laughed. "Gee, but we made
some git-away, that trip! Gee, I'll tell the world!"

The little girl clung to her protector, shaking with weariness and
fear. "I--can't run 'nother step," she gasped. "Will he come after us
here?"

"Naw," returned the boy, with reassuring boldness, "he won't come this
far. Yer just lay down in the grass, under this here tree, 'til yer
catch yer wind; then we'll make it on down to the Interpreter's--'tain't
far to the stairs. You just take it easy. I'll watch."

The soft grass and the cool shade were very pleasant after their wild
run, and they were loath to go, even when little Maggie had recovered
from her exhaustion. Very soon, when no danger appeared, the boy forgot
to watch and began an animated discussion of their thrilling
experience.

But Maggie did not share her brother's boastful triumph. "Do you
suppose," she said, wistfully, "that he is like that to the princess
lady?"

Bobby shook his head doubtfully. "I don't know. Yer can't tell what
he'd do to her if he took a notion. Old Adam Ward would do anything
that's mean, to anybody, no matter who. I'll bet--"

The sound of some one approaching from the direction of the castle
interrupted Bobby's conjectures.

Maggie would have made another frantic effort to escape, but the boy
caught her roughly and drew her down beside him. "No use to run--yer
can't make it," he whispered. "Best lay low. An' don't yer dast even
whimper."

Lying prone, they wormed themselves into the tall grass, with the trunk
of the tree between them and the road, until it would have been a keen
observer, indeed, who would have noticed them in passing.

They heard the approaching danger coming nearer and nearer. Little
Maggie buried her face in the grass roots to stifle a scream. Now it
was on the other side of the tree. It was passing on. Suddenly they
almost buried themselves in the ground in their effort to lie closer to
the earth. The sound of the footsteps had ceased.

For what seemed to them hours, the frightened children lay motionless,
scarcely daring to breathe. Then another sound came to their straining
ears--a sound not unfamiliar to the children of the Flats. A woman was
weeping.

Cautiously, the more courageous Bobby raised his head until he could
peer through the tangled stems and blades of the sheltering grass. A
moment he looked, then gently shook his sister's arm. Imitating her
brother's caution, little Maggie raised her frightened face. Only a few
steps away, their princess lady was crouching in the grass, with her
face buried in her hands, crying bitterly.

"Well, what do yer know about that?" whispered Bobby.

A moment longer they kept their places, whispering in consultation.
Then they rose quietly to their feet and, hand in hand, stood waiting.

Helen had not consciously followed the children. Indeed, her mind was
so occupied with her own troubled thoughts that she had forgotten the
little victims of her father's insane cruelty. To avoid meeting her
mother, as she fled from the scene of her father's madness, she had
taken a course that led her toward the entrance to the estate. With the
one thought of escaping from the invisible presence of that hidden
thing, she had left the grounds and followed the quiet old road.

When the storm of her grief had calmed a little, the young woman raised
her head and saw Sam Whaley's dirty, ill-kept children gazing at her
with wondering sympathy. It is not too much to say that Helen Ward was
more embarrassed than she would have been had she found herself thus
suddenly in the presence of royalty. "I am sorry you were frightened,"
she said, hesitatingly. "I can't believe that he really would have hurt
you."

"Huh," grunted Bobby. "I'm darned glad we was outside of that there
fence."

Maggie's big eyes were eloquent with compassion. "Did--did he scare
yer, too?"

Helen held back her tears with an effort. "Yes, dear, he frightened me,
too--dreadfully."

With shy friendliness, little Maggie drew closer. "Is he--is he sure
'nuff, yer father?"

"Yes," returned Helen, "he is my father."

"Gee!" ejaculated Bobby. "An' is he always like that?"

"Oh, no, indeed," returned Helen, quickly. "Father is really kind and
good, but he--he is sick now and not wholly himself, you see."

"Huh," said Bobby. "He didn't act very sick to me. What's ailin' him?"

Helen answered slowly, "I--we don't just know what it is. The doctors
say it is a nervous trouble."

"An' does he--does he ever whip yer?" asked Maggie.

In spite of the pain in her heart, Helen smiled. "No--never."

"Our dad gits mad, too, sometimes," said Bobby. "But, gee! he ain't
never like that. Dad, he wouldn't care if somebody just looked into our
yard. We wasn't a-hurtin' nothin'--just a-lookin'--that's all. Yer
can't hurt nothin' just a-lookin', can yer?"

"I am sorry," said Helen.

"Be yer happy?" asked Maggie, suddenly, with disconcerting directness.

"Why!" replied Helen, "I--What makes you ask such a funny question?"

Maggie was too much embarrassed at her own boldness to answer, and
Bobby came to her rescue.

"She wants to know because the Interpreter, he tole us about a princess
what lived in a castle an' wasn't happy 'til the fairy told her how to
find the jewel of happiness; an' Mag, here, she thinks it's you."

"And where did the princess find the jewel of happiness?" asked Helen.

Little Maggie's anxiety to help overcame her timidity and she answered
precisely, "On the shores of the sea of life which was not far from the
castle where the beautiful princess lived."

Helen looked toward the Flats, the Mill, and the homes in the
neighborhood of the old house. "The shores of the sea of life," she
repeated, thoughtfully. "I see."

"Yes," continued Maggie, with her tired little face alight, and her
eyes big with excited eagerness, "but the beautiful princess, she
didn't know that there jewel of happiness when she seen it."

"No?" said Helen, smiling at her little teacher.

"No--an' so she picked up all the bright, shiny stones what was no good
at all, 'til the fairy showed her how the real jewel she was a-wantin'
was an old, ugly, dirt-colored thing what didn't look like any jewel,
no more 'n nothin'."

"Oh, I see!" said Helen again. And Bobby thought that she looked at
them as though she were thinking very hard.

"Yer forgot something Mag," said the boy, suddenly.

"I ain't neither," returned his sister, with unusual boldness. "Yer
shut up an' see." Then, to Helen, "Is yer heart kind, lady?"

"I--I hope so, dear," returned the disconcerted Helen. "Why?"

"Because, if it is, then the fairies will help yer find the real jewel
of happiness, 'cause that was the reason, yer see, it all
happened--'cause the beautiful princess's heart was kind." She turned
to Bobby triumphantly, "There, ain't that like the Interpreter said?"

"Uh-huh," agreed the boy. "But yer needn't to worry--her heart's all
right. Didn't she give us that there grand ride in her swell
autermobile?"

Little Maggie's embarrassment suddenly returned.

"Did you really enjoy the ride?" asked Helen.

Bobby answered, "I'll say we did. Gee! but yer ought to a seen us
puttin' it all over everybody in the Flats."

Something in the boy's answer brought another smile to Helen's lips,
but it was not a smile of happiness.

"I really must go now," she said, rising. "Thank you for telling me
about the happiness jewel. Don't you think that it is time for you to
be running along home? Your mother will be wondering where you are,
won't she?"

"Uh-huh," agreed Bobby.

But Maggie's mind was fixed upon more important things than the time of
day. With an effort, she forced herself to say, "If the fairy comes to
yer will yer tell me about it, sometime? I ain't never seen one myself
an'--an'--"

"You poor little mite!" said Helen. "Yes, indeed, I will tell you about
it if the fairy comes. And I will tell the fairy about you, too. But,
who knows, perhaps the happiness fairy will visit you first, and you
can tell her about me."

And something that shone in the beautiful face of the young woman, or
something that sang in her voice, made little Maggie sure--deep down
inside--that her princess lady would find the jewel of happiness, just
as the Interpreter had said. But neither the child of the Flats, nor
the daughter of the big house on the hill knew that the jewel of
happiness was, even at that moment, within reach of the princess lady's
hand.


When Helen had disappeared from their sight, the two children started
on their way down the hill toward the dingy Flats.

"Gee," said Bobby, "won't we have something to tell the kids now? Gee!
We'll sure make 'em sore they wasn't along. Think of us a-talkin' to
old Adam Ward's daughter, herself. Gee! Some stunt--I'll tell the
world."

They had reached the foot of the old stairway and were discussing
whether or not they dared prolong their absence from home by paying a
visit to the Interpreter, when a man appeared on the road from town.
Bobby caught sight of the approaching stranger first, and the boy's
freckled countenance lighted with excited interest and admiration.

"Hully Gee!" he exclaimed, catching Maggie by the arm. "Would yer look
who's a-comin'!"

The man was not, in his general appearance, one to inspire a feeling of
confidence. He was a little above medium height, with fat shoulders, a
thick neck, and dark, heavy features with coarse lips showing through a
black beard trimmed to a point, and small black eyes set close above a
large nose with flaring nostrils. His clothing was good, and he carried
himself with assurance. But altogether there was about him the
unmistakable air of a foreigner.

Bobby continued in an excited whisper, "That there's Jake Vodell we've
heard Dad an' the men talkin' so much about. He's the guy what's
a-goin' to put the fear of God into the Mill bosses and rich folks.
He's a-goin' to take away old Adam Ward's money an' Mill, an'
autermobiles, an' house an'--everything, an' divide 'em all up 'mong us
poor workin' folks. Gee, but he's a big gun, I'm tellin' yer!"

The man came on to the foot of the stairs and stopped before the
children. For a long moment he looked them over with speculative
interest. "Well," he said, abruptly, "and who are you? That you belong
in this neighborhood it is easy to see."

"We're Bobby and Maggie Whaley," answered the boy.

The man's black eyebrows were lifted, and he nodded his head
reflectively. "Oh-ho, you are Sam Whaley's kids, heh?"

"Uh-huh," returned Bobby. "An' I know who yer are, too."

"So?" said the man.

"Uh-huh, yer Jake Vodell, the feller what's a-goin' to make all the big
bugs hunt their holes, and give us poor folks a chance. Gee, but I'd
like to be you!"

The man showed his strong white teeth in a pleased smile. "You are all
right, kid," he returned. "I think, maybe, you will play a big part in
the cause sometime--when you grow up."

Bobby swelled out his chest with pride at this good word from his hero.
"I'm big enough right now to put a stick o' danermite under old Adam
Ward's castle, up there on the hill."

Little Maggie caught her brother's arm. "Bobby, yer ain't a-goin'--"

The man laughed. "That's the stuff, kid," he said. "But you better let
jobs like that alone--until you are a bit older, heh?"

"Mag an' me has been up there to the castle all this afternoon,"
bragged the boy. "An' we talked with old Adam's daughter, too, an'--an'
everything."

The man stared at him. "What is this you tell me?"

"It's so," returned Bobby, stoutly, "ain't it, Mag? An' the other day
Helen Ward, she give us a ride, in her autermobile--while she was
a-visitin' with the Interpreter up there."

Jake Vodell's black brows were drawn together in a frown of
disapproval. "So this Adam Ward's daughter, too, calls on the
Interpreter, heh! Many people, it seems, go to this Interpreter." To
Bobby he said suddenly, "Look here, it will be better if you kids stay
away from such people--it will get you nothing to work yourselves in
with those who are not of your own class!"

"Yes, sir," returned Bobby, dutifully.

"I will tell you what you can do, though," continued the man. "You can
tell your father that I want him at the meeting to-night. Think you can
remember, heh?"

"Yer bet I can," replied the boy. "But where'll I tell him the meetin'
is?"

"Never you mind that," returned the other. "You just tell him I want
him--he will know where. And now be on your way."

To Bobby's utter amazement, Jake Vodell went quickly up the steps that
led to the Interpreter's hut.

"Gee!" exclaimed the wondering urchin. "What do yer know about that,
Mag? He's a-goin' to see our old Interpreter. Gee! I guess the
Interpreter's one of us all right. Jake Vodell wouldn't be a-goin' to
see him if he wasn't."

As they trudged away through the black dust, the boy added, "Darn it
all, Mag, if the Interpreter _is_ one of us what's the princess lady
goin' to see him for?"




CHAPTER VII

THE HIDDEN THING


Hiding in the shrubbery, Adam Ward chuckled and grinned with strange
glee as he listened to his wife calling for him. Here and there about
the grounds she searched anxiously; but the man kept himself hidden and
enjoyed her distress. At last, when she had come so near that discovery
was certain, he suddenly stepped out from the bushes and, facing her,
waited expectantly.

And now, by some miracle, Adam Ward's countenance was transformed--his
eyes were gentle, his gray face calm and kindly. His smile became the
affectionate greeting of a man who, past the middle years of life, is
steadfast in his love for the mother of his grown-up children.

Mrs. Ward had been, in the years of her young womanhood, as beautiful
as her daughter Helen. But her face was lined now with care and
shadowed by sadness, as though with the success of her husband there
had come, also, regrets and disappointments which she had suffered in
silence and alone.

She returned Adam's smile of greeting, when she saw him standing there,
but that note of anxiety was still in her voice as she said gently,
"Where in the world have you been? I have looked all over the place for
you."

He laughed as he went to her--a laugh of good comradeship. "I was just
sitting over there under that tree," he answered. "I heard you when you
called the first time, but thought I would let you hunt a while. The
exercise will do you good--keep you from getting too fat in your old
age."

She laughed with him, and answered, "Well, you can just come and talk
to me now, while I rest."

Arm in arm, they went to the rustic seat in the shade of the tree
where, a few minutes before, he had so aimlessly broken the twigs.

But when they were seated the man frowned with displeasure. "Alice, I
wish to goodness there was some way to make these men about the place
keep a closer watch of things."

She glanced at him quickly. "Has something gone wrong, Adam?"

"Nothing more than usual," he answered, harshly. "There are always a
lot of prowlers around. But they don't stay long when I get after
them." He laughed, shortly--a mirthless, shamefaced laugh.

"I am sorry you were annoyed," she said, gently.

"Annoyed!" he returned, with the manner of a petulant child. "I'll
annoy _them_. I tell you I am not going to stand for a lot of people's
coming here, sneaking and prying around to see what they can see. If
anybody wants to enjoy a place like this let him work for it as I
have."

She waited a while before she said, as if feeling her way toward a
definite point, "It has been hard work, hasn't it, Adam? Almost too
hard, I fear. Did you ever ask yourself if, after all, it is really
worth the cost?"

"Worth the cost! I am not in the habit of paying more than things are
worth. This place cost me exactly--"

She interrupted him, quietly, "I don't mean that, dear. I was not
thinking of the money. I was thinking of what it has all cost in work
and worry and--and other things."

"It has all been for you and the children, Alice," he answered,
wearily; and there was that in his voice and face which brought the
tears to her eyes. "You know that, so far as I am personally concerned,
it doesn't mean a thing in the world to me. I don't know anything
outside of the Mill myself."

She put her hand on his arm with a caressing touch. "I know--I
know--and that is just what troubles me. Perhaps if you would share it
more--I mean if you could enjoy it more--I might feel different about
it. We were all so happy, Adam, in the old house."

When he made no reply to this but sat with his eyes fixed on the ground
she said, pleadingly, "Won't you put aside all the cares and worries of
the Mill now, and just be happy with us, Adam?"

The man moved uneasily.

"You know what the doctors say," she continued, gently. "You really--"

He interrupted impatiently, "The doctors are a set of fools. I'll show
them!"

She persisted with gentle patience. "But even if the doctors are wrong
about your health, still there is no reason why you should not rest
after all your years of hard work. I am sure we have everything in the
world that any one could possibly want. There is not the shadow of a
necessity to make you go on wearing your life out as you have been
doing."

"Much you know about what is necessary for me to do," he retorted. "A
man isn't going to let the business that he has been all his life
building up go to smash just because he has made money enough to keep
him without work for the rest of his days."

"There are other things that can go to smash besides business, Adam,"
she returned, sadly. "And I am sure that the Mill will be safe enough
now in John's hands."

"John!" he exclaimed, bitterly. "It's John and his crazy ideas that I
am afraid of."

She returned, quickly, with a mother's pride, "Why, Adam! You have said
so many times how wonderfully well John was doing, and what a splendid
head he had for business details and management. It was only last week
that you told me John was more capable now than some of the men that
have been in the office with you for several years."

Adam Ward rose and paced uneasily up and down before her. "You don't
understand at all, Alice. It is not John's business ability or his
willingness to get into the harness that worries me. It is the fool
notions that he picked up somewhere over there in the war--there, and
from that meddlesome old socialist basket maker."

"Just what notions do you mean, Adam? Is it John's friendship with
Charlie Martin that you fear?"

"His friendship with young Martin is only part of it. I am afraid of
his attitude toward the whole industrial situation. Haven't you heard
his wild, impracticable and dangerous theories of applying, as he says,
the ideals of patriotism, and love of country, and duty to humanity,
and sacrifice, and heroism, and God knows what other nonsense, to the
work of the world? You know as well as I do how he talks about the
comradeship of the mills and factories and workshops being like the
comradeship of the trenches and camps and battlefields. His notions of
the relation between an employer and his employees would be funny if
they were not so dangerous. Look at his sympathy with the unions! And
yet I have shown him on my books where this union business has cost me
hundreds of thousands of dollars! Comradeship! Loyalty! I tell you I
know what I'm talking about from experience. The only way to handle the
working class is to keep them where they belong. Give them the least
chance to think you are easy and they are on your neck. If I had my way
I'd hold them to their jobs at the muzzle of a machine gun. McIver has
the right idea. He is getting himself in shape right now for the
biggest fight with labor that he has ever had. Everybody knows that
agitator Jake Vodell is here to make trouble. The laboring classes have
had a long spell of good times now and they're ripe for anything. All
they need is a start and this anarchist is here to start them. And
John, instead of lining up with McIver and getting ready to fight them
to a finish, is spending his time hobnobbing with Charlie Martin and
listening to that old fool Interpreter."

"Come, dear," she said, soothingly. "Come and sit down here with me.
Don't let's worry about what may happen."

He obeyed her with the manner of a fretful child. And presently, as she
talked, the cloud lifted from his gray, haggard face, and he grew calm.
Soon, when she made some smiling remark, he even smiled back at her
with the affectionate companionship of their years.

"You will try not to worry about things so much, won't you, Adam?" she
said, at last. "For my sake, won't you?"

"But I tell you, Alice, there is serious trouble ahead."

"Perhaps that is all the more reason why you should retire now," she
urged. He stirred uneasily, but she continued, "Just suppose the worst
that could possibly happen should happen, suppose you even had to give
up the Mill to Pete Martin and the men, suppose you lost the new
process and everything, and we were obliged to give up our home here
and go back to live in the old house--it would still be better than
losing you, dear. Don't you know that to have you well and strong would
be more to Helen and John and to me than anything else could possibly
be?"

Mrs. Ward knew, as the words left her lips, that she had said the wrong
thing. She had heard him rave about his ownership of the new process
too many times not to know--while any mention of his old workman friend
Peter Martin always threw him into a rage. But in her anxiety the
forbidden words had escaped her.

She drew back with a little gasp of fear at the swift change that came
over his face. As if she had touched a hidden spring in his being the
man's countenance was darkened by furious hatred and desperate fear.
His trembling lips were ashen; the muscles of his face twitched and
worked; his eyes blazed with a vicious anger beyond all control.
Springing to his feet, he faced her with a snarling exclamation, and in
a voice shaking with passion, cried, "Pete Martin! What is he? Who is
he? Everything he has in the world he owes to me. Haven't I kept him in
work all these years? Haven't I paid him every cent of his wages? Look
at his home. Not many working men have been able to own a place like
that. What would he have done without the money I have given him every
pay day? I could have turned him out long ago--kicked him out of a job
without a cent. He's had all that's coming to him--every penny. _I_
built up the Mill. That new process is mine--it's patented in my name.
I have had the best lawyers I could hire to protect it on every
possible point. If it hadn't been for my business brain there wouldn't
be any new process. What could Pete Martin have done with it--the fool
has no more business sense than a baby. I introduced it--I exploited
it--I built it up and made it worth what it is, and there isn't a court
in the world that wouldn't say I have a legal right to it."

In vain Mrs. Ward tried to soothe him with reassuring words, pleading
with him to be calm.

"I know they're after me," he raved. "They have tried all sorts of
tricks. There is always some sneaking spy watching for a chance to get
me, but I'll fix them. I built the business up and I can tear it down.
Let them try to take anything away from me if they dare. I'll burn the
Mill and the whole town before I'll give up one cent of my legal rights
to Pete Martin or any of his tribe."

Forgetting his companion, the man suddenly started off across the
grounds, waving his arms and shaking his fists in wild gestures as he
continued his tirade against his old fellow workman. Mrs. Ward knew
from experience the uselessness of trying to interfere until he had
exhausted himself.

      *       *       *       *       *

As Helen was returning to the house after her talk with the children,
she saw her mother coming slowly from that part of the grounds where
the young woman had watched her father. It was evident, even at a
distance, that Mrs. Ward was greatly distressed. When the young woman
reached her mother's side, Mrs. Ward said, simply, "Your father,
dear--he is terribly upset. Go to him, Helen, you can always do more
for him than any one else--he needs you."

It was not an easy task for Helen Ward to face her father just then. As
she went in search of him she tried to put from her mind all that she
had seen and to remember only that he was ill. She found him in the
most distant and lonely part of the grounds, sitting with his face
buried in his hands--a figure of hopeless despair.

While still some distance away, she forced herself to call cheerily,
"Hello, father."

As he raised his head, she turned to pick a few flowers from a near-by
bed. When he had had a moment to regain, in a measure, his
self-control, she went toward him, arranging her blossoms with careful
attention.

Adam Ward watched his daughter as she drew near, much as a condemned
man might have watched through the grating of a prison window.

"What is it, father?" she asked, gently, when she had come close to his
side. "Another one of your dreadful nervous headaches?"

He put a shaking hand to his brow. "Yes," he said wearily.

"I am so sorry," she returned, sitting down beside him. "You have been
thinking too hard again, haven't you?"

"Yes, I guess I have been thinking too hard."

"But you're going to stop all that now, aren't you?" she continued,
cheerily. "You're just going to forget the old Mill, and do nothing but
rest and play with me."

"Could I learn to play, do you think, Helen?"

"Why, of course you could, father, with me to teach you. That's the
best thing I do, you know."

He watched her closely. "And you don't think that I--that I am no
longer capable of managing my affairs?"

She laughed gayly. "What a silly question--_you_ capable--_you_,
father, the best brain--the best business executive in Millsburgh. You
know that is what everybody says of you. You are just tired, and need a
good rest, that is all."

The man's drooping shoulders lifted and his face brightened as he said,
slowly, "I guess perhaps you are right, daughter."

"I am sure of it," she returned, eagerly. Then she added brightly, as
if prompted by a sudden inspiration, "I'll tell you what you do--ask
the Interpreter."

"Ask the Interpreter!"

She nodded, smiling as if she had put a puzzling conundrum to him.

"You mean for me to ask that paralyzed old basket maker's advice? You
mean, ask him if I should retire from business?"

Again she nodded with a little laugh; but under her laughter there was
a note of earnestness.

"And don't you know," he said, "that it is the Interpreter who is at
the bottom of all my trouble?"

"Father!"

"The Interpreter, I tell you, is back of the whole thing. He is the
brains of the labor organizations in Millsburgh and has been for years.
Why, it was the Interpreter who organized the first union in this
district. He has done more to build them up than all the others put
together. Pete Martin and Charlie, the ringleaders of the Mill workers'
union, are only his active lieutenants. I haven't a doubt but that he
is responsible for this agitator Jake Vodell's coming to Millsburgh.
That miserable shack on the cliff is the real headquarters of labor in
this part of the country. Your Interpreter is a fine one for _me_ to go
to for advice. His hut is a fine place for your brother to spend his
spare time. It would be a fine thing, right now, with this man Vodell
in town, for me to resign and leave the Mill in the hands of John, who
is already in the hands of the Interpreter and the Martins and their
Mill workers' union!"

As Adam finished, the deep sonorous tones of the great Mill whistle
sounded over the community. It was the signal for the closing of the
day's work.

Obedient to the habit of years, the Mill owner looked at his watch. In
his mind he saw the day force trooping from the building and the night
shift coming in. Throughout the entire city, in office and shop and
store and home, the people ordered their days by the sound of that
whistle, and Adam Ward had been very proud of this recognition accorded
him.

Wearily, as one exhausted by a day of hard labor, this man who so
feared the power of the Interpreter looked up at his daughter. "I wish
I could rest," he said.




CHAPTER VIII

WHILE THE PEOPLE SLEEP


The Interpreter's hands were busy with his basket weaving; his mind
seemingly was occupied more with other things. Frequently he paused to
look up from his work and, with his eyes fixed on the Mill, the Flats
and the homes on the hillside, apparently considered the life that lay
before him and of which he had been for so many years an interested
observer and student. On the opposite side of the table, silent Billy
was engaged with something that had to do with the manufacturing
interests of their strange partnership.

When Jake Vodell reached the landing at the top of the stairway, he
stopped to look about the place with curious, alert interest, noting
with quick glances every object in the immediate vicinity of the hut,
as if fixing them in his mind. Satisfied at last by the thoroughness of
his inspection, he went toward the house, but his step on the board
walk made no sound. At the outer door of the little hut the man halted
again, and again he looked quickly about the premises. Apparently there
was no one at home. Silently he entered the room and the next instant
discovered the two men on the porch.

The Interpreter's attention at the moment was fixed upon his work and
he remained unaware of the intruder's presence, while Jake Vodell,
standing in the doorway, regarded the old basket maker curiously, with
a contemptuous smile on his bearded lips.

But Billy Rand saw him. A moment he looked at the man in the doorway
inquiringly, as he would have regarded any one of the Interpreter's
many visitors; then the deaf and dumb man's expression changed.
Glancing quickly at his still unobserving companion, he caught up a
hatchet that lay among the tools on the table and, with a movement that
was not unlike the guarding action of a huge mastiff, rose to his feet.
His face was a picture of animal rage; his teeth were bared, his eyes
gleamed, his every muscle was tense.

The man in the doorway was evidently no coward, but the smile vanished
from his heavy face and his right hand went quickly inside his vest.
"What's the matter with you?" he said, sharply, as Billy started toward
him with deliberate menace in his movement.

At the sound of the man's voice the Interpreter looked up. One glance
and the old basket maker caught the wheels of his chair and with a
quick, strong movement rolled himself between the two men--so close to
Billy that he caught his defender by the arm. Facing his enraged
companion, the Interpreter talked to him rapidly in their sign language
and held out his hand for the hatchet. The silent Billy reluctantly
surrendered the weapon and drew back to his place on the other side of
the table, where he sat glaring at the stranger in angry watchfulness.

The man in the doorway laughed harshly. "They told me I would find a
helpless old cripple up here," he said. "I think you are pretty well
protected at that."

Regarding the stranger gravely, the Interpreter apologized for his
companion. "You can see that Billy is not wholly responsible," he
explained. "He is little more than a child mentally; his actions are
often apparently governed wholly by that strange instinct which seems
to guide the animals. He is very devoted to me."

"He seems to be in earnest all right," said the stranger. "He is a
husky brute, too."

The Interpreter, regarding the man inquiringly, almost as if he were
seeking in the personality of his visitor the reason for Billy's
startling conduct, replied, simply, "He would have killed you."

With a shrug of his thick shoulders, the stranger uninvited came
forward and helped himself to a chair, and, with the air of one
introducing a person of some importance, said, "I am Vodell--Jake
Vodell. You have heard of me, I think, heh?"

"Oh, yes. Indeed, I should say that every one has heard of you, Mr.
Vodell. Your work has given you even more than national prominence, I
believe."

The man was at no pains to conceal his satisfaction. "I am known, yes."

"It is odd," said the Interpreter, "but your face seems familiar to me,
as if I had met you before."

"You have heard me speak somewhere, maybe, heh?"

"No, it cannot be that. You have never been in Millsburgh before, have
you?"

"No."

"It is strange," mused the old basket maker.

"It is the papers," returned Vodell with a shrug. "Many times the
papers have my picture--you must have seen."

"Of course, that is it," exclaimed the Interpreter. "I remember now,
distinctly. It was in connection with that terrible bomb outrage in--"

"Sir!" interrupted the other indignantly. "Outrage--what do you mean,
outrage?"

"I was thinking of the innocent people who were killed or injured,"
returned the Interpreter, calmly. "I believe you were also prominent in
those western strikes where so many women and children suffered, were
you not?"

The labor agitator replied with the exact manner of a scientific
lecturer. "It is unfortunate that innocent persons must sometimes be
hurt in these affairs. But that is one of the penalties that society
must pay for tolerating the conditions that make these industrial wars
necessary."

"If I remember correctly, you were in the South, too, at the time that
mill was destroyed."

"Oh, yes, they had me in jail there. But that was nothing. I have many
such experiences. They are to me very commonplace. Wherever there are
the poor laboring men who must fight for their rights, I go. The mines,
shops, mills, factories--it is all the same to me. I go wherever I can
serve the Cause. I have been in America now ten years, nearly eleven."

"You are not, then, a citizen of this country?"

Jake Vodell laughed contemptuously. "Oh, sure I am a citizen of this
country--this great America of fools and cowards that talk all the time
so big about freedom and equality, while the capitalist money hogs hold
them in slavery and rob them of the property they create. I had to
become a citizen when the war came, you see, or they would have sent me
away. But for that I would make myself a citizen of some cannibal
country first." The old basket maker's dark eyes blazed with quick
fire and he lifted himself with sudden strength to a more erect
position in his wheel chair. But when he spoke his deep voice was calm
and steady. "You have been in our little city nearly a month, I
understand."

"Just about. I have been looking around, getting acquainted, studying
the situation. One must be very careful to know the right men, you
understand. It pays, I find, to go a little slow at first. We will go
fast enough later." His thick lips parted in a meaning grin.

The Interpreter's hands gripped the wheels of his chair.

"Everybody tells me I should see you," the agitator continued.
"Everywhere it is the same. They all talk of the Interpreter. 'Go to
the Interpreter,' they say. When they told me that this great
Interpreter is an old white-headed fellow without any legs, I laughed
and said, 'What can he do to help the laboring man? He is not good for
anything but to sit in a wheel chair and make baskets all the day. I
need _men_.' But they all answer the same thing, 'Go and see the
Interpreter.' And so I am here."

When the Interpreter was silent, his guest demanded, harshly, "They are
all right, heh? You are a friend to the workingman? Tell me, is it so?"

The old basket maker spoke with quiet dignity. "For twenty-five years
Millsburgh has been my home, and the Millsburgh people have been my
friends. You, sir, have been here less than a month; I have known you
but a few minutes."

Jake Vodell laughed understandingly. "Oh-ho, so that is it? Maybe you
like to see my credentials before we talk?"

The Interpreter held up a hand in protest. "Your reputation is
sufficient, Mr. Vodell."

The man acknowledged the compliment--as he construed it--with a shrug
and a pleased laugh. "And all that is said of you by the laboring class
in your little city is sufficient," he returned. "Even the men in
McIver's factory tell me you are the best friend that labor has ever
had in this place." He paused expectantly.

The man in the wheel chair bowed his head.

"And then," continued Jake Vodell, with a frown of displeasure, "when I
come to see you, to ask some questions about things that I should know,
what do I hear? The daughter of this old slave-driver and robber--this
capitalist enemy of the laboring class--Adam Ward, she comes also to
see this Interpreter who is such a friend of the people."

The Interpreter laughed. "And Sam Whaley's children, they come too."

"Oh, yes, that is better. I know Sam Whaley. He is a good man who will
be a great help to me. But I do not understand this woman business."

"I have known Miss Ward ever since she was born; I worked in the Mill
at the same bench with her father and Peter Martin," said the man in
the wheel chair, with quiet dignity.

"I see. It is not so bad sometimes to have a friend or two among these
millionaires when there is no danger of it being misunderstood. But
this man, who was once a workman and who deserted his class--this
traitor, her father--does he also call on you, Mr. Interpreter?"

"Once in a great while," answered the Interpreter.

Jake Vodell laughed knowingly. "When he wants something, heh?" Then,
with an air of taking up the real business of his visit to the little
hut on the cliff, he said, "Suppose now you tell me something about
this son of Adam Ward. You have known him since he was a boy too--the
same as the girl?"

"Yes," said the Interpreter, "I have known John Ward all his life."

Something in the old basket maker's voice made Jake Vodell look at him
sharply and the agitator's black brows were scowling as he said,
"So--you are friends with him, too, I guess, heh?"

"I am, sir; and so is Captain Charlie Martin, who is the head of our
Mill workers' union, as you may have heard."

"Exactly. That is why I ask. So many of the poor fools who slave for
this son of Adam Ward in the Mill say that he is such a fine man--so
kind. Oh, wonderful! Bah! When was the wolf whelped that would be kind
to a rabbit? You shall tell me now about the friendship between this
wolf cub of the capitalist Mill owner and this poor rabbit, son of the
workman Peter Martin who has all his life been a miserable slave in the
Mill. They were in the army together, heh?"

"They enlisted in the same company when the first call came and were
comrades all through the worst of the fighting in France."

"And before that, they were friends, heh?"

"They had been chums as boys, when the family lived in the old house
next door to the Martins. But during the years that John was away in
school and college Adam moved his family to the place on the hill where
they live now. When John was graduated and came home to stay, he
naturally found his friends in another circle. His intimacy with Pete
Martin's boy was not renewed--until the war."

"Exactly," grunted Jake Vodell. "And how did Adam Ward like it that his
boy should go to war? Not much, I think. It was all right for the
workman's boy to go; but the Mill owner's son--that was different,
heh?"

There was a note of pride in the Interpreter's voice, as he answered,
"Adam was determined that the boy should not go at all, even if he were
drafted. But John said that it was bad enough to let other men work to
feed and clothe him in ordinary times of peace without letting them do
his fighting for him as well."

"This Adam Ward's son said that!" exclaimed the agitator. "Huh--it was
for the effect--a grand-stand play."

"He enlisted," retorted the Interpreter. "And when his father would
have used his influence to secure some sort of commission with an easy
berth, John was more indignant than ever. He said if he ever wore
shoulder straps they would be a recognition of his service to his
country and not, as he put it, a pretty gift from a rich father. So he
and Charlie Martin both enlisted as privates, and, as it happened, on
the same day. Under such circumstances it was quite as natural that
their old friendship should be reestablished as that they should have
drifted apart under the influence of Adam Ward's prosperity."

Jake Vodell laughed disagreeably. "And then this wonderful son of your
millionaire Mill owner comes out of the war and the army exactly as he
went in, nothing but a private--not even a medal--heh? But this workman
from the Mill, he comes back a captain with a distinguished service
medal? I think maybe Private Ward's father and mother and sister liked
that--no?"

Disregarding these comments, the Interpreter said, "Now that I have
answered your questions about the friendship of John Ward and Charlie
Martin, may I ask just why you are so much interested in the matter?"

The agitator gazed at the man in the wheel chair with an expression of
incredulous amazement. "Is it possible you do not understand?" he
demanded. "And you such a friend to the workingman! But wait--one more
thing, then I will answer you. This daughter of Adam Ward--she is also
good friends with her old playmate who is now Captain Martin, is she?
The workman goes sometimes to the big house on the hill to see his
millionaire friends, does he?"

The Interpreter answered, coldly, "I can't discuss Miss Ward with you,
sir."

"Oh-ho! And now I will answer your question as to my interest. This
John Ward is already a boss in the Mill. His father, everybody tells
me, is not well. Any time now the old man may retire from the business
and the son will have his place as general manager. He will be the
owner. The friendship between these two men is not good--because
Charlie Martin is the leader of the union and there can be no such
friendship between a leader of the laboring class and one of the
employer class without great loss to our Cause. You will see. These
rich owners of the Mill, they will flatter and make much of this poor
workman captain because of his influence among the people who slave for
them, and so any movement to secure for the workmen their rights will
be defeated. Do you understand now, Mister basket maker, heh?"

The Interpreter bowed his head.

The agitator continued. "Already I find it very hard to accomplish much
with this Mill workers' union. Except for our friend, Sam Whaley, and a
few others, the fools are losing their class loyalty. Their fighting
spirit is breaking down. It will not do, I tell you. At the McIver
factory it is all very different. It will be easy there. The workingmen
show the proper spirit--they will be ready when I give the word. But I
am not pleased with the situation in this Mill of Adam Ward's. This
fine friendship between the son of the owner and the son of the workman
must stop. Friendship--bah!--it is a pretense, a sham, a trick."

The man's manner, when he thus passed judgment upon the comradeship of
John and Charlie, was that of an absolute monarch who was righteously
annoyed at some manifestation of disloyalty among his subjects. His
voice was harsh with the authority of one whose mandates are not to be
questioned. His countenance was dark with scowling displeasure.

"And you, too, my friend," he went on, glaring from under his black
brows at the old man in the wheel chair, "you will be wise if you
accept my suggestion and be a little careful yourself. It is not so
bad, perhaps, this young woman coming to see you, but I am told that
her brother also comes to visit with the Interpreter. And this leader
of the Mill workers' union, Charlie Martin, he comes, too. Everybody
says you are the best friend of the working people. But I tell you
there cannot be friendship between the employer class and the laboring
class--it must be between them always war. So, Mr. Interpreter, you
must look out. The time is not far when the people of Millsburgh will
know for sure who is a friend to the labor class and who is a friend to
the employer class."

The Interpreter received this warning from Jake Vodell exactly as he
had listened to Bobby Whaley's boyish talk about blowing up the castle
of Adam Ward on the hill.

Rising abruptly, the agitator, without so much as a by-your-leave, went
into the house where he proceeded to examine the books and periodicals
on the table. Billy started from his place to follow, but the
Interpreter shook his head forbiddingly, and while Jake Vodell passed
on to the farther corner of the room and stood looking over the well
filled shelves of the Interpreter's library, the old basket maker
talked to his companion in their silent language.

When this foreign defender of the rights of the American laboring class
returned to the porch he was smiling approval. "Good!" he said. "You
are all right, I think. No man could read the papers and books that you
have there, and not be the friend of freedom and a champion of the
people against their capitalist masters. We will have a great victory
for the Cause in Millsburgh, comrade. You shall see. It is too bad that
you do not have your legs so that you could take an active part with me
in the work that I will do."

The Interpreter smiled. "If you do not mind, I would like to know
something of your plans. That is," he added, courteously, "so far as
you are at liberty to tell me."

"Certainly I will tell you, comrade," returned the other, heartily.
"Who can say--it may be that you will be of some small use to me after
all." His eyes narrowed slyly. "It may be that for these Mill owners to
come to you here in your little hut is perhaps not so bad when we think
about it a little more, heh? The daughter of Adam Ward might be led to
say many foolish little things that to a clever man like you would be
understood. Even the brother, the manager of the Mill--well, I have
known men like him to talk of themselves and their plans rather freely
at times when they thought there was no harm. And what possible harm
could there be in a poor crippled old basket maker like you, heh?" The
man laughed as though his jest were perfectly understood and
appreciated by his host--as, indeed, it was.

"But about my plans for this campaign in Millsburgh," he went on. "You
know the great brotherhood that I represent and you are familiar with
their teachings of course." He gestured comprehensively toward the
Interpreter's library.

The man in the wheel chair silently nodded assent.

Jake Vodell continued. "I am come to Millsburgh, as I go everywhere, in
the interests of our Cause. It is my experience that I can always work
best through the unions."

The Interpreter interrupted. "Oh, one of our Millsburgh unions sent for
you then? I did not know."

The agitator shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "No--no--I was not
sent for. I was sent. I am here because it was reported that there was
a good opportunity to advance the Cause. No union brings me. I come to
the unions, to work with them for the freedom of the laboring class."

"And of what union are you a member, sir?" asked the Interpreter.

"Me! Ha! I am not a member of any of your silly American unions! I
belong to that greater union, if you please, which embraces them all.
But your unions know and receive me as a leader because of the work
that I do for all. Our Cause is the cause of the working people of
America, as it is the cause of the laboring classes in England, and
France, and Russia, and Germany, and everywhere in the world."

Again the old basket maker bowed his silent assent.

"You have, in this place," continued the agitator, "one strong union of
the Mill workers. In the other shops and factories and in the trades it
is like McIver's factory, the men are not so well organized."

Again the Interpreter interrupted. "The working people of Millsburgh,
generally, receive the highest wage paid anywhere in the country, do
they not?"

"Ah, but surely that is not the question, comrade. Surely you
understand that all the laboring people of America must be united in
one brotherhood with all the other countries of the world, so that
they, the producers of wealth, shall be able to take possession of, and
operate, the industries of this country, and finally take this
government away from the capitalist class who are now the real owners
of what you call your 'land of the free and the home of the brave.'
Bah! You fool Americans do not know the first meaning of the word
freedom. You are a nation of slaves. If you were as brave as you sing,
you very soon would be your own masters."

"And your plan for Millsburgh?" asked the Interpreter, calmly.

"It is simple. But for this John Ward and his friendship with Charlie
Martin that so deceives everybody, it will be easy. The first step in
my campaign here will be to call out the employees of McIver's factory
on a strike. I start with McIver's workmen because his well-known
position against the laboring class will make it easy for me to win the
sympathy of the public for the strikers."

"But," said the Interpreter, "the factory union is working under an
agreement with McIver."

The self-appointed savior of the American working people shrugged his
heavy shoulders disdainfully. "That is no matter--it is always easy to
find a grievance. When the factory men have walked out, then will come
the sympathetic strike of your strong Mill workers' union. All the
other labor organizations will be forced to join us, whether they wish
to or not. I shall have all Millsburgh so that not a wheel can turn
anywhere. The mills--the factories--the builders--the
bakeries--everything will be in our hands and then, my comrade, then!"

The man rose to his feet and stood looking out over the life that lay
within view from the Interpreter's balcony-porch, as if possessed with
the magnitude of the power that would be his when this American
community should be given into his hand.

Silent, watchful Billy stirred uneasily.

The Interpreter, touching his companion's arm, shook his head.

Jake Vodell, deep in his ambitious dream, did not notice. "The time is
coming, comrade," he said, "and it is nearer than the fool Americans
think, when the labor class will rise in their might and take what is
theirs. My campaign here in Millsburgh, you must know, is only one of
the hundreds of little fires that we are lighting all over this
country. The American people, they are asleep. They have drugged
themselves with their own talk of how safe and strong and prosperous
they are. Bah! There is no people so easy to fool. They think we strike
for recognition of some union, or that it is for higher wages, or some
other local grievance. Bah! We use for an excuse anything that will
give us a hold on the labor class. These silly unions, they are nothing
in themselves. But we--_we_ can use them in the Cause. And so
everywhere--North, South, East, West--we light our little fires. And
when we are ready--Boom! One big blaze will come so quick from all
points at once that it will sweep the country before the sleeping fools
wake up. And then--then, comrade, you shall see what will happen to
your capitalist vultures and your employer swine, who have so long
grown fat on the strength of the working class."

A moment longer he stood as if lost in the contemplation of the glory
of that day, when, in the triumph of his leadership, the people of the
nation he so despised and hated would rise in bloody revolution against
their own government and accept in its stead the dictatorship of
lawless aliens who profess allegiance to no one but their own godless
selves.

Then he turned back to the Interpreter with a command, "You, comrade,
shall keep me informed, heh? From these people of our enemy class who
come here to your hut, you will learn the things I will want to know. I
shall come to you from time to time, but not too often. But, you must
see that your watchdog there has better manners for me, heh?" He
laughed and was gone.


At the club that evening, Jim McIver sat with a group of men discussing
the industrial situation.

"They're fixing for a fight all right," said one. "What do you think,
Jim?"

The factory owner answered, "They can have a fight any time they want
it. Nothing but a period of starvation will ever put the laboring class
back where it belongs and the sooner we get it over the better it will
be for business conditions all around."


In the twilight dust and grime of the Flats, a woman sat on the
doorstep of a wretched house. Her rounded shoulders slouched
wearily--her tired hands were folded in her lap. She stared with dull,
listless eyes at the squalid homes of her neighbors across the street.
The Interpreter had described the woman to Helen--"a girl with fine
instincts for the best things of life and a capacity for great
happiness."


In a room back of a pool hall of ill-repute, the man Jake Vodell sat in
conference with three others of his brotherhood. A peculiar knock
sounded at the door. Vodell drew the bolt. Sam Whaley entered. "My kids
told me you wanted me," said the workman. Long into the night, on the
balcony porch of the hut on the cliff, John Ward and Captain Charlie
Martin talked with the Interpreter. As they talked, they watched the
lights of the Mill, the Flats, the business streets, and the homes.




CHAPTER IX

THE MILL


It was pay day at the Mill.

No one, unless he, at some period in his life, has been absolutely
dependent upon the wages of his daily toil, can appreciate a pay day.
To experience properly the thrill of a pay day one must have no other
source of income. The pay check must be the only barrier between one
and actual hunger. Bobby and Maggie Whaley knew the full meaning of pay
day. Their mother measured life itself by that event.

Throughout the great industrial hive that morning there was an
electrical thrill of anticipation. Smiles were more frequent; jests
were passed with greater zest; men moved with a freer step, a more
joyous swing. The very machinery seemed in some incomprehensible way to
be animated with the spirit of the workmen, while the droning, humming,
roaring voice of the Mill was unquestionably keyed to a happier note.
In the offices among the bookkeepers, clerks, stenographers and the
department heads, the same brightening of the atmosphere was
noticeable. Nor was the spirit of the event confined to the Mill
itself; throughout the entire city--in the stores and banks, the post
office, the places of amusement, in the homes on the hillside and in
the Flats--pay day at the Mill was the day of days.

It was an hour, perhaps, after the whistle had started the big plant
for the afternoon.

John Ward was deep in the consideration of some business of moment with
the superintendent, George Parsons--a sturdy, square-jawed,
steady-eyed, middle-aged man, who had come up from the ranks by the
sheer force of his natural ability.

      *       *       *       *       *

There is nothing at all unusual about John Ward. He is simply a good
specimen of the more intelligent class of our young American manhood,
with, it might be, a more than average mind for business, which he had
inherited from his father. He is, in short, a fair type of the healthy,
clean-living, straight-thinking, broad-gauged, big-hearted young
citizen such as one may find by the hundreds of thousands in the many
fields of our national activities. In our arts and industries, in our
banks and commercial houses, in our factories and newspapers, on our
farms and in our professions, in our educational institutions, among
our writers and scientists, in our great transportation organizations,
and in the business of our government, our John Wards are to be found,
ready to take the places left to them by the passing of their fathers.

Since his return from the war, the young man had devoted himself with
the enthusiasm of a great purpose to a practical study of his father's
big industrial plant. Adam still held the general management, but his
son knew that the time must come when the responsibility of that
position would fall to him.

With John's inherited executive ability and his comradeship, plus the
driving force of his fixed and determined purpose, it was not strange
that he so quickly gained the loyal support and cooperation of his
father's long-trained assistants. His even-tempered friendliness and
ready recognition of his dependence upon his fellow workers won their
love. His industry, his clear-headed, open-minded consideration of the
daily problems presented, with his quick grasp of essential details,
commanded their admiring respect. Under the circumstance of his
father's nervous trouble and the consequent enforced absence of Adam
from his office for more and more frequent periods, it was inevitable
that John, by common, if silent, consent of the executive heads, should
be advanced more and more toward the general manager's desk.

The superintendent, gathering up his blue prints and memoranda, arose.
"And will that be all, sir?" he asked, with a smile.

Nearly every one smiled when he finished an interview with Adam Ward's
son; probably because John himself nearly always smiled when he ended a
consultation or gave an order.

"That's all from my side, George," he said, leaning back in his chair
and looking up at the superintendent in his open, straightforward way
that so surely invited confidence and trust. "Have you anything else on
your mind?"

"Nary a thing, John," returned the older man, and with a parting "so
long" he started toward the door that opened into the Mill.

With that smile of genuine affection still lingering on his face, John
watched the sturdy back of the old superintendent as if, for the
moment, his thoughts had swung from George Parsons' work to George
Parsons himself.

The superintendent opened the door and was about to step out when he
stopped suddenly and with a quick, decided movement drew back into the
room and closed the door again. To the young man in the other end of
the big office it looked as though the superintendent had seen
something that startled him. Another moment and George was again
bending over John's desk.

"The old man is out there, John."

"What! Father! Why I had no idea that he was coming down to-day." A
look of anxiety came into the frank gray eyes. "He has not been so well
lately, George. I wonder why he didn't come to the office first as
usual."

"He sometimes slips in back that way, you know," returned the
superintendent.

"He really ought not to be here," said the young man. "I wish--" He
hesitated.

"He's generally in a state of mind when he comes in like that," said
George. "You're not needing a goat, are you, boy?"

John smiled. "There's not a thing wrong in the plant so far as I know,
George."

"I don't know of anything either," returned the other, "but we may not
know all the way. There's one thing sure, the old man ought not to be
wandering through the works alone. There's some of those rough-necks
would--well it's too darned easy, sometimes, for accidents to happen,
do you see? I'll rustle out there and stick around convenient like.
You'd better stay where you are as if you didn't know he was on the
job. And remember, son, if you _should_ need a goat, I'm qualified. If
anything has happened--whether it has or he only thinks it has--just
you blame it on to old George. I'll understand."


The work was at the height of its swing when burly Max Gardner paused a
second to straighten his back and wipe the sweat from his sooty face.
As he stooped again to his heavy task, he said to his mates in a voice
that rumbled up from the depths of his naked, hairy chest, "Get a gate
on y'--get a gate on y'--y' rough-necks. 'Tis th' boss that's a-lookin'
'round to see who he'll be tyin' th' can to next."

The men laughed.

"There's one thing sure," said Bill Connley, who looked as though his
body were built of rawhide stretched over a framework of steel, "when
John Ward ties the can to a man, that man knows what 'tis for. When he
give Jim Billings his time last week, he says to him, says he, 'Jim,
I'm sorry for y'. Not because I'm fir'in' y',' says he, 'but because
y're such a loafer that y're no good to yerself nor to anybody
else--y're a disgrace to the Mill,' says he, 'and to every honest
working man in it.' An' Jim, he never give a word back--just hung his
head an' got out of sight like a dog with his tail between his legs
after a good swift kick."

"An' th' young boss was right at that," commented sturdy Soot Walters.
"Jim was a good man when he was new on the job, but since he got the
wrinkles out of his belly, he's been killin' more time than any three
men in the works."

"Pass me that pinch bar, Bill," called Dick Grant from the other side.
As he reached for the tool, his glance took in the figure that had
caught the eye of big Max. "Holy Mike!" he exclaimed, "'tis the old man
himself."

Every man in the group except Max turned his face toward Adam Ward, who
stood some distance away, and a very different tone marked the voice of
Bill Connley as he said, "Now what d'ye think brings that danged old
pirate here to look us over this day?"

"Who the devil cares?" growled Scot, as, with an air of sullen
indifference, they turned again to their work.

      *       *       *       *       *

No one seeing the Mill owner as he viewed his possessions that day
could have believed that this was the wretched creature that Helen had
watched from the arbor. Away from the scenes of his business life Adam
Ward was like some poor, nervous, half-insane victim of the drug habit.
At the Mill, he was that same drug fiend under the influence of his
"dope."

His manner was calm and steady, with no sign of nervousness or lack of
control. His gray face--which, in a way, was the face of a
student--gave no hint of the thoughts and emotions that stirred within
him. As he looked about the great industrial institution to which he
had given himself, body, mind and soul, all the best years of his life,
his countenance was as expressionless as the very machines of iron and
steel and wood among which he moved--a silent, lonely, brooding spirit.
No glow of worthy pride in the work of his manhood, no gleam of
friendly comradeship for his fellow workmen, no joy of his kinship with
the great humanity that was here personified shone in his eyes or
animated his presence. Cold and calculating, he looked upon the human
element in the Mill exactly as he looked upon the machinery. Men cost
him a certain definite sum of dollars; they must be made to return to
him a certain increase in definite dollars on that cost. The living
bodies, minds, and souls that, moving here and there in the haze of
smoke and steam and dust, vitalized the inanimate machinery and gave
life and intelligent purpose to the whole, were no more to him than one
of his adding machines in the office that, mechanically obedient to his
touch, footed up long columns of dollars and cents. It is not strange
that the humanity of the Mill should respond to the spirit of its owner
with the spirit of his adding machines and give to him his totals of
dollars and cents--with nothing more.

Quickly the feeling of Adam Ward's presence spread throughout the busy
plant. Smiling faces grew grim and sullen. In the place of good-natured
jest and cheerful laugh there were muttered curses and contemptuous
epithets. The very atmosphere seemed charged with antagonism and
rebellious hatred.

"Wad ye look at it?" said one. "And they tell me that white-faced old
devil used to work along side of Pete and the Interpreter at that same
bench where Pete's a-workin' yet."

"He did that," said another. "I was a kid in the Mill at the time;
'twas before he got hold of his new process."

"Pete Martin is a better man than Adam Ward ever was or will be at
that--process or no process," said a third, while every man within
hearing endorsed the sentiment with a hearty word, an oath or a pointed
comment.

"But the young boss is a different sort, though," came from the first
speaker.

"He is that!"

"The boy's all right."

"John's a good man."

A workman with a weak face and shifty eyes paused in passing to say,
"You'll find out how different the boy is onct he's put to the test.
He's the same breed, an' it's just like Jake Vodell said last night,
there ain't one of the greedy capitalist class that wouldn't nail a
laboring man to the cross of their damnable system of slavery if they
dast."

A silence fell over the group.

Then a dry voice drawled, "Jake Vodell ain't never overworked himself
as anybody knows of, has he? As for you, Sam Whaley, I'm thinkin' it
would take somethin' more than a crucifyin' to get much profit out of
you, the way you mooch around."

There was a general laugh at this and Sam Whaley went on his weak way
to do whatever it was that he was supposed to be doing.

"Sam's all right, Bob," said one who had laughed. "His heart is in the
right place."

"Sure he is," agreed Bob. "But I sometimes can't help thinkin', just
the same, that if I was a-ownin' and a-workin' slaves, I'd consider him
a mighty poor piece of property."


When Adam Ward entered the office, some time later, he walked straight
to his son's desk, without so much as a glance or a nod of recognition
toward any other soul in the big room.

"I want to talk with you, John," he said, grimly, and passed on into
his private office.

The closing of the door of that sacred inner room behind John was the
signal for a buzz of excited comments.

"Lordy," gasped a stenographer to her nearest neighbor, "but I'm sorry
for poor young Mr. Ward--did you see the old man's face?"

The half-whispered remark expressed, with fair accuracy, the general
sentiment of the entire force.

Adam Ward did not sit down at his desk, but going to a window he stood
looking out as though deep in thought.

"Father," said John, at last, "what is it? Has anything happened?"

Adam turned slowly, and it was evident that he was holding his
self-control by a supreme effort of will. "I have made up my mind to
quit," he said. "From to-day on you will take my place and assume my
responsibilities in the Mill."

"I am glad, father," said John, simply, "You really should be free from
all business cares. As for my taking your place in the Mill," he
smiled, "no one could ever do that, father."

"You have full control and absolute authority from to-day on," returned
Adam. "I shall never put my foot inside the doors of the plant or the
office again."

"But, father!" cried John. "There is no need for you to--"

Adam interrupted him with an imperious gesture. "There is no use
arguing about it," he said, coldly. "But there are two or three things
that I want to tell you--that I think you ought to know. You can take
them from me or not, as you please. My ideas and policies that made
this institution what it is to-day will probably be thrown aside as so
much worthless junk, but I am going to give you a word or two of
warning just the same."

John knew that when his father was in this mood there was nothing to do
but to keep silent. But the expression of the old Mill owner's face
filled his son's heart with pity, and the boy could not refrain from
saying, "I am sorry you feel that way about it, father, because really
you are all wrong. Can't we sit down and talk it over comfortably?"

"I prefer to stand," returned Adam. "I can say all I have to say in a
few words. I am retiring because I know, now, after"--he
hesitated--"after the last two nights, that I must. I am turning the
Mill over to you because I would rather burn it to the ground than see
it in the hands of any one outside the family. I believe, too, that the
only way to get the wild, idiotic ideas of that old fool basket maker
out of your head is to make you personally responsible for the success
or failure of this business. I have watched you long enough to know
that you have the ability to handle it, and I am convinced that once
you realize how much money you can make, you will drop all your
sentimental nonsense and get your feet on solid ground."

John Ward's cheeks flushed, but he made no reply to his father's
pointed observations.

"I had those same romantic notions about work and business myself when
I was your age," continued Adam, "but experience taught me better.
Experience will teach you." He paused and went to stand at the window
again.

John waited.

Presently Adam faced about once more. "I suppose you have noticed that
McIver is greatly interested in your sister Helen?"

"I imagined so," returned John, soberly. "Well, he is. He wants to
marry her. If she will only be sensible and see it right, it is a
wonderful opportunity for us. McIver made over a million out of the
war. His factory is next to this in size and importance and it is so
closely related to the Mill that a combination of the two industries,
with the control of the new process, would give you a tremendous
advantage. You could practically put all competitors out of business.
McIver has approached me several times on the proposition but I have
been holding off, hoping that Helen would accept him, so that their
marriage would tie the thing up that much tighter. You and McIver, with
the family relation established by Helen, would make a great team." He
hesitated and his face worked with nervous emotion as he added, "There
is something about the new process that--perhaps--you should know--I--"
He stopped abruptly to pace up and down the room in nervous excitement,
as if fighting for the mastery of the emotions aroused by this mention
of his patented property.

As John Ward watched his father and felt the struggle within the man's
secret self, the room seemed suddenly filled with the invisible
presence of that hidden thing. The younger man's eyes filled with tears
and he cried in protest, "Father--father--please don't--"

For a moment Adam Ward faced his son in silence. Then, with a sigh of
relief, he muttered, "It's all right, John; just one of my nervous
attacks. It's gone now."

Changing the subject abruptly, he said, "I must warn you, my boy--keep
away from the Interpreter. Have nothing to do with him; he is
dangerous. And watch out for Pete Martin and Charlie, too. They are all
three together. This agitator, Jake Vodell, is going to make trouble.
He is already getting a start with McIver's men. You have some radicals
right here on your pay roll, but if you stick with McIver and follow
his lead you will come through easily and put these unions where they
belong. That's all, I guess," he finished, wearily. "Call in your
superintendent."

"Just a moment, father," said John Ward, steadily. "It is not fair to
either of us for me to accept the management of the Mill without
telling you that I can't do all that you have suggested."

Adam looked at his son sharply. "And what can't you do?" he demanded.

"I shall never work with McIver in any way," answered John slowly. "You
know what I think of him and his business principles. Helen's interest
in him is her own affair, but I have too great a sense of loyalty to my
country and too much self-respect ever to think of McIver as anything
but a traitor and an enemy."

"And what else?" asked Adam.

"I will not promise to keep away from the Interpreter. I reserve the
right to choose my own friends and business associates, and I will deal
with the employees of the Mill and with the unions without regard to
McIver's policies or any consideration of his interest in any way
whatever."

For a long moment Adam Ward looked at his son who stood so straight and
uncompromisingly soldier-like before him. Suddenly, to John's
amazement, his father laughed. And there was not a little admiration
and pride in the old Mill owner's voice as he said, "I see! In other
words, if you are going to be the boss, you don't propose to have any
strings tied to you."

"Would you, sir?" asked John.

"No, I wouldn't," returned Adam and laughed again. "Well, go ahead.
Have it your own way. I am not afraid for you in the long run. You are
too much like me not to find out where your own interests lie, once you
come squarely up against the situation. I only wanted to help you, but
it looks as though you would have to go through the experience for
yourself. It's all right, son, go to it! Now call George."

When the superintendent entered the private office, Adam Ward said,
briefly, "George, I am turning the Mill over to John here. From to-day
on he is the manager without any strings on him in any way. He has the
entire responsibility and is the only authority. He accounts to no one
but himself. That is all."

Abruptly Adam Ward left the private office. Without even a look toward
the men in the big outer room who had served with him for years, he
passed on out to the street.


When the whistle sounded, John went out into the Mill to stand near the
window where the workmen passing in line received their envelopes.

From every part of the great main building, from the yards and the
several outer sheds and structures they came. From furnace and engine
and bench and machine they made their way toward that given point as
scattered particles of steel filings are drawn toward a magnet. The
converging paths of individuals touched, and two walked side by side.
Other individuals joined the two and as quickly trios and quartets came
together to form groups that united with other similar groups; while
from the mass thus assembled, the thin line was formed that extended
past the pay clerk's window and linked the Mill to the outer world.

In that eager throng of toilers Adam Ward's son saw men of almost every
race: Scotchmen greeted Norwegians; men from Ireland exchanged friendly
jests with men from Italy; sons of England laughed with the sons of
France; Danes touched elbows with Dutchmen; and men from Poland stood
shoulder to shoulder with men whose fathers fought with Washington. And
every man was marked alike with the emblems of a common
brotherhood--the brotherhood of work. Their faces were colored with the
good color of their toil--with the smoke of their furnaces, and the
grime of their engines, and the oil from their machines mixed with the
sweat of their own bodies. Their clothing was uniform with the insignia
of their united endeavor. And to the newly appointed manager of the
Mill, these men of every nation were comrades in a common cause,
spending the strength of their manhood for common human needs. He saw
that only in the work of the world could the brotherhood of man be
realized; only in the Mill of life's essential industries could the
nations of the earth become as one.

In that gathering of workmen the son of Adam Ward saw men of many
religions, sects and creeds: Christians and pagans; Catholics and
Protestants; men who worshiped the God of Abraham and men who worshiped
no God; followers of strange fanatical spiritualism and followers of a
stranger materialism. And he saw those many shades of human beliefs
blended and harmonized--brought into one comprehensive whole by the
power of the common necessities of human life.

He saw that the unity of the warring religions of the world would not
be accomplished in seminaries of speculative theological thought, but
that in the Mill of life the spiritual brotherhood of all mankind would
be realized. In work, he saw the true worship of a common God whose
vice-regent on earth is humanity itself.

In that pay-day assembly John saw men of middle age to whom the work
into which they daily put the strength of their lives meant nothing
less than the lives of their families. In the families dependent upon
the Mill he saw the life of the nation dependent upon the nation's
industries. As he saw in the line men old and gray and bent with the
toil of many years, he realized how the generation of this day is
indebted for every blessing of life--for life itself, indeed--to these
veterans of the Mill who have given, their years in work that the
nation might, through its industries, live and, in the building up of
its industries, grow strong.

As he watched the men of his own age, he thought how they, too, must
receive the torch from the failing hands of their passing fathers, and
in the Mill prove their manhood's right to carry the fire of their
country's industrial need.

And there were boys on the edge of manhood, who must be, by the Mill,
trained in work for the coming needs of their country; who must indeed
find their very manhood itself in work, or through all their years
remain wards of the people--a burden upon humanity--the weakness of the
nation. For as surely as work is health and strength and honor and
happiness and life, so surely is idleness disease and weakness and
shame and misery and death.

The home builder, the waster, the gambler, the loyal citizen, the
slacker, the honest and dishonest--they were all there at the pay
window of the Mill. And to each the pay envelope meant a different
thing. To big Max the envelope meant an education for his son. To Bill
Connley it meant food and clothing for his brood of children. To young
Scot it meant books for his study. To others it meant medicine or
doctors for sick ones at home. To others it meant dissipation and
dishonor. To all alike those pay envelopes meant Life.

As these men of the Mill passed the son of Adam Ward, there were many
smiling nods and hearty words of greeting. Now and then one would speak
a few words about his work. Others passed a laughing jest. Many who
were his comrades in France gave him the salute of their military
days--half in fun, but with a hint of underlying seriousness that made
the act a recognition of his rank in the industrial army.

And John returned these greetings in the same good spirit of
fellowship. To one it was, "Hello, Tony, how is that new baby at your
house?" To another, whose hand was swathed in a dirty bandage, "Take
care of that hand, Mack; don't get funny with it just because it's well
enough to use again." To another, "How is the wife, Frank, better?
Good, that's fine." Again it was, "You fellows on number six machine
made a record this week." Again, "Who's the hoodoo on number seven
furnace?--four accidents in six days is going some--better look around
for your Jonah." And again, "I heard about that stunt of yours, Bill;
the kid would have been killed sure if you hadn't kept your head and
nerve. It was great work, old man." And to a lad farther down the line,
"You'll know better next time, won't you, son?" But there were some who
passed John Ward with averted faces or downcast eyes. Here and there
there were sneering, vicious glances and low muttered oaths and curses
and threats. Not infrequently the name of Jake Vodell was mentioned
with approved quotations from the agitator's speeches of hatred against
the employer class.

The last of the long line of workmen was approaching the window when
Pete Martin greeted the son of his old bench mate with a smile of
fatherly affection and pride.

"Hello, Uncle Pete," returned John. "Where is Charlie?"

"I'm sure I don't know, John," the old man answered, looking about. "I
supposed he had gone on, I was a little slow myself."

"There he is," said John, as the soldier workman came running from a
distant part of the building.

When Captain Charlie came up to them, his father moved on to the window
so that for a moment the two friends were alone.

"It's come, Charlie," said John, in a low tone. "Father told me and
gave it out to the superintendent to-day."

"Hurrah!" said Charlie Martin, and he would have said more but his
comrade interrupted him.

"Shut up, will you? We must go out to the hill to-morrow for a talk.
I'll come for you early."

"Right!" said Charlie with a grin, "but may I be permitted to say
congratulations?"

"Congratulations your foot!" returned the new general manager. "It's
going to be one whale of a job, old man."

The last of the stragglers came near and Charlie Martin moved on, in
his turn, to the pay window.

When John arrived home in the late afternoon, his sister met him with
many joyful exclamations. "Is father in earnest? Are you really to take
his place, John?"

John laughed. "You would have thought he was in earnest if you had
heard him." Then he asked, soberly, "Where is father, Helen; is he all
right?"

"He has been shut up in his room all alone ever since he told us," she
returned, sadly. "I do hope he will be better now that he is to have
complete rest."

As if determined to permit no cloud to mar the joy of the occasion, she
continued, with eager interest, "Do tell me about it, brother. Were the
men in the office glad? Aren't you happy and proud? And how did the
workmen take it?"

"The people in the office were very nice," he answered, smiling back at
her. "Good old George looked a little like he wanted to laugh and cry
at the same time. The men in the plant don't know yet, except
Charlie--I told him."

A little shadow fell over Helen's happy face and she looked away. "I
suppose of course you would tell Charlie Martin the first thing," she
said, slowly. Then, throwing her arm suddenly about his neck, she
kissed him. "You are a dear, silly, sentimental old thing, but I am as
proud as I can be of you."

"As for that," returned John, "I guess it must run in the family
somehow. I notice little things now and then that make me think my
sister may not always be exactly a staid, matter-of-fact old lady owl."

When he had laughed at her blushes, and had teased her as a brother is
in duty bound, he said, seriously, "Will you tell me something, Helen?
Something that I want very much to know--straight from you."

"What is it, John?"

"Are you going to marry Jim McIver?"

"How do you know that he wants me?"

"Father told me to-day. Don't fence please, dear. Either tell me
straight out or tell me to mind my own business."

She replied with straightforward honesty, "Mr. McIver has asked me,
John, but I can't tell you what my answer will be. I don't know
myself."




CHAPTER X

CONCERNING THE NEW MANAGER


When the Mill whistle sounded at the close of that pay day, Mary was
sitting under the tree in the yard with her sewing basket--a gift from
the Interpreter--on the grass beside her chair. The sunlight lay warm
and bright on the garden where the ever industrious bees were filling
their golden bags with the sweet wealth of the old-fashioned flowers.
Bright-winged butterflies zigzagged here and there above the shrubbery
along the fence and over her head; in the leafy shadows of the trees
her bird friends were cheerfully busy with their small duties. Now and
then a passing neighbor paused to exchange a word or two of their
common interests. Presently workmen from the Mill went by--men of her
father's class who lived in that vicinity of well-kept cottage homes;
and each one called a greeting to the daughter of his friend.

And so, at last, Peter Martin himself and Captain Charlie turned in at
the little white gate and came to sit down on the grass at her feet.

"You are late to-day," said Mary, smiling. "I suppose you both have
forgotten that the vegetable garden is to be hoed this afternoon and
that you, Charlie, promised to beat the rugs for me."

Captain Charlie stretched himself lazily on the cool grass. "We should
worry about gardens and rugs and things," he returned. "This is the day
we celebrate."

The father laughed quietly at his daughter's look of puzzled inquiry.

"The day you celebrate?" said Mary. "Celebrate what?"

Charlie answered with a fair imitation of a soapbox orator, "This, my
beloved sister, is the day of our emancipation from the iron rule of
that cruel capitalist, who has for so many years crushed the lives of
his toiling slaves in his Mill of hell, and coined our heart's blood
into dollars to fill his selfish coffers of princely luxury. Down
through the ringing ages of the future this day will be forever
celebrated as the day that signals the dawning of a new era in the
industrial world of--uh-wow! Stop it!"

Captain Charlie was ticklish and the toe of Mary's slippered foot had
found a vital spot among his ribs.

"You sound like that Jake Vodell," she said. "Stop your nonsense this
minute and tell me what you mean or--" Her foot advanced again
threateningly.

Captain Charlie rolled over to a safe distance and sat up to grin at
her with teasing impudence.

"What's the matter with him, father?" she demanded.

But Pete only laughed and answered, "I guess maybe he thinks he's going
to get promoted to some higher-up position in the Mill."

"No such luck for me!" said Charlie quickly. "John will need me too
much right where I am."

A bright color swept into Mary's cheeks and her eyes shone with glad
excitement. "Do you mean that John--that his father has--" She looked
from her father's face to her brother and back to her father again.

Pete nodded silently.

"You've guessed it, sister," said Charlie. "Old Adam walked out for
good to-day, turned the whole works over to John--troubles, triumphs,
opportunities, disasters and all. And it's a man's sized job the boy
has drawn, believe me--especially right now, with Jake Vodell as busy
as he is."

"The men in the Mill were all pleased with the change, weren't they?"
asked Mary.

"They will be, when they hear of it," answered Captain Charlie, getting
to his feet. "That is," he added, as he met his father's look, "most of
them will be."

"There's some in the Mill that it won't make any difference to, I'm
afraid," said Peter Martin, soberly.

Then the two men went into the house to, as they said, "clean up"--an
operation that required a goodly supply of water with plenty of soap
and a no little physical effort in the way of vigorous rubbing.

When her father and brother were gone, Mary Martin sat very still. So
still was she that a butterfly paused in its zigzag flight about the
yard to rest on the edge of the work basket at her side. At last the
young woman rose slowly to her feet, dropping the sewing she had held
on the other things in the basket. The startled butterfly spread its
gorgeous wings and zigzagged away unnoticed. Crossing the little lawn,
Mary made her way among the flowers in the garden until she stood half
hidden in the tall bushes which grew along the fence that separated the
Martin home from the neglected grounds about the old house. When her
father and brother went to their pleasant task in the vegetable garden
she was still standing there, but the men did not notice.

      *       *       *       *       *

Later, when Mary called the men to supper, the change in the management
of the Mill was again mentioned. And all during the evening meal it was
the topic of their conversation. It was natural that the older man
should recall the days when he and Adam and the Interpreter had worked
together.

"The men generally showed a different spirit toward their work in those
days," said the veteran. "They seemed to have a feeling of pride and a
love for it that I don't see much of now. Of late years, it looks as
though everybody hates his job and is ashamed of what he is doing. They
all seem to think of nothing but their pay, and busy their minds with
scheming how they can get the most and give the least. It's the regular
thing to work with one eye on the foreman and the other on the clock,
and to count it a great joke when a job is spoiled or a breakdown
causes trouble." All of which was a speech of unusual length for Pete
Martin. Captain Charlie asked, thoughtfully, "And don't you think,
father, that Adam looks on the work of the Mill in exactly that spirit
of 'get the most for the least' without regard to the meaning and
purpose of the work itself?"

"There's no reason to doubt it, son, that I can see," returned the old
workman.

"I have often wondered," said Charlie, "how much the attitude of the
employees toward their work is due to the attitude of their employers
toward that same work."

The old workman returned, heartily, "We'll be seeing a different
feeling in the Mill under John, I am thinkin'--he's different."

"I should say he is different," agreed Charlie, quickly. "John would
rather work at his job for nothing than do anything else for ten times
the salary he draws. But was Adam always as he is now?"

"About his work do you mean?"

"Yes."

Adam Ward's old comrade answered, slowly, "I've often wondered that
myself. I can't say for sure. As I look back now, I think sometimes
that he used to have an interest in the work itself at first. Takin'
his development of the new process and all--it almost seems that he
must have had. And yet, there's some things that make me think that all
the time it meant nothing to him but just what he could get out of it
for himself."

"Helen will be happy over the change, won't she?" remarked Mary.

"Helen!" ejaculated Captain Charlie, with more emphasis perhaps than
the occasion demanded.

"She won't give it so much as a thought. Why should she? She can go on
with her dinners and card parties and balls and country club affairs
with the silk-hatted slackers of her set, just the same as if nothing
had happened."

Mary laughed. "Seems to me I have heard something like that
before--'silk-hatted slackers'--it sounds familiar."

Captain Charlie watched her suspiciously.

The father laughed quietly.

"Oh, yes," she exclaimed, with an air of triumph. "It was Bobby Whaley
who said it. I remember thinking at the time that it probably came to
him from his father, who of course got it from Jake Vodell. Silk-hatted
slackers--sounds like Jake, doesn't it, father?"

Captain Charlie grinned sheepishly. "I know it was a rotten thing to
say," he admitted. "Some of the best and bravest men in our army were
silk-hatters at home. They were in the ranks, too, a lot of them--just
like John Ward. And some of the worst cowards and shirkers and slackers
that ever lived belonged to our ancient and noble order of the
horny-handed sons of toil, that Jake Vodell orates about. But what gets
me, is the way some of those fellows who were everything but slackers
in France act, now that they are back home. Over there they were on the
job with everything they had, to the last drop of their blood. But now
that they are back in their own home country again, they have simply
thrown up their hands and quit--that is, a lot of them have. They seem
to think that the signing of the Armistice ended it all and that they
can do nothing now for the rest of their lives. Who was it said, 'Peace
hath her victories,' or something like that? Well, peace hath her
defeats, too. I'll be hanged if I can understand how a man who has it
in him to be a one hundred per cent American hero in war can be a
Simon-pure slacker in times of peace."

As he finished, Captain Charlie pushed his chair back from the table
and, finding his pipe, proceeded to fill it with the grim determination
of an old-time minuteman ramming home a charge in his Bunker Hill
musket.

Later the two men went out to enjoy their pipes on the lawn in the cool
of the evening. They were discussing the industrial situation when
Mary, having finished her household work for the night, joined them.

"I forgot to tell you," she said, "that Jake Vodell called to-day."

"Again!" exclaimed Charlie.

"If Vodell wants to talk with us he'll have to come when we are at
home," said Pete Martin, slowly, looking at his daughter.

With a laugh, the young woman returned, "But I don't think that it was
you or Charlie that he wanted to see this time, father."

"What did he want?" demanded her brother quickly.

"He wanted me to go with him to a dance next Tuesday," she answered
demurely.

"Huh," came in a tone of disgust from Charlie.

The father asked, quietly, "And what did you say to him, Mary?"

"I told him that I went to dances only with my friends."

"Good!" said Captain Charlie.

"And what then?" asked Pete.

"Then," she hesitated, "then he said something about my being careful
that I had the right sort of friends and referred to Charlie and John."

"Yes?" said Mary's father.

"He said that the only use John Ward had for Charlie was to get a line
on the union and the plans of the men--that his friendship was only a
pretext in order that he might use Charlie as a sort of spy and that
the union men wouldn't stand for it."

Captain Charlie muttered something under his breath that he could not
speak aloud in the presence of his sister.

Pete Martin deliberately knocked the ashes from his pipe.

"Then," continued Mary, "he talked about how everybody knew that John
was nothing but a"--she laughed mockingly at her brother--"a
silk-hatted swell who couldn't hold his job an hour if it wasn't that
his father owned the Mill, and that Charlie was a hundred times more
competent to manage the business. He said that anybody could see how
Charlie's promotion in the army proved him superior to John, who was
never anything but a common private."

Captain Charlie laughed aloud. "John and I understand all about that
superiority business. I was lucky, that's all--our captain just
happened to be looking in my direction. Believe me, good old John was
just as busy as I ever dared to be, only it was his luck to be busy at
some other point that the captain didn't see."

"Is that all Jake had to say, daughter?"

"No," answered the young woman, slowly. "I--I am afraid I was angry at
what he called John--I mean at what he said about Charlie and John's
friendship--and so I told him what I thought about him and Sam Whaley
and their crowd, and asked him to go and not come back again except to
see you or Charlie."

"Good for you, Mary!" exclaimed her brother.

But the old workman said nothing.

"And how did Jake take his dismissal?" asked Charlie, presently.

"He went, of course," she answered. "But he said that he would show me
what the friendship of a man of John Ward's class meant to a working
man; that the union men would find out who the loyal members were and
when the time came they would know whom to reward and whom to treat as
traitors to the Cause."

For a little while after this the three sat in silence. At last Peter
Martin rose heavily to his feet. "Come, Charlie, it is time we were on
our way to the meeting; we mustn't be late, you know."

When her father and brother were gone to the meeting of the Mill
workers' union, Mary Martin locked the door of the cottage and walked
swiftly away.

It was not far to the Interpreter's hut, and presently the young woman
was climbing the old zigzag stairway to the little house on the edge of
the cliff above. There was no light but the light of the stars--the
faint breath of the night breeze scarcely stirred the leaves of the
bushes or moved the tall weeds that grew on the hillside. At the top of
the stairs Mary paused to look at the many lights of the Flats, the
Mill, the business houses, the streets and the homes, that shone in the
shadowy world below.

She was about to move toward the door of the hut when the sound of
voices coming from the balcony-porch halted her. The Interpreter was
speaking. She could not distinguish his words, but the deep tones of
the old basket maker's voice were not to be mistaken. Then the young
woman heard some one reply, and the laughing voice that answered the
Interpreter was as familiar to Mary Martin as the laugh of her own
brother. The evening visitor to the little hut on the cliff was the son
of Adam Ward.

Very softly Mary Martin stole back down the zigzag steps to the road
below. Slowly she went back through the deep shadows of the night to
her little home, with its garden of old-fashioned flowers, next door to
the deserted house where John Ward was born.

Late that night, while John was still at the Interpreter's hut, Adam
Ward crept alone like some hunted thing about the beautiful grounds of
his great estate. Like a haunted soul of wretchedness, the Mill owner
had left his bed to escape the horror of his dreams and to find, if
possible, a little rest from his torturing fears in the calm solitude
of the night.

      *       *       *       *       *

When Pete Martin, with Captain Charlie and their many industrial
comrades, had returned to their homes after the meeting of their union,
five men gathered in that dirty, poorly lighted room in the rear of
Dago Bill's pool hall.

The five men had entered the place one at a time. They spoke together
in low, guarded tones of John Ward and his management of the Mill, of
Pete Martin and Captain Charlie, of the Interpreter and McIver.

And three of those five men had come to that secret place at Jake
Vodell's call, directly from the meeting of the Mill workers' union.




CHAPTER XI

COMRADES


Mary was in the flower garden that Sunday forenoon when John Ward
stopped his big roadster in front of the Martin cottage.

It was not at all unusual for the one-time private, John, to call that
way for his former superior officer. Nearly every Sunday when the
weather was fine the comrades would go for a long ride in John's car
somewhere into the country. And always they carried a lunch prepared by
Captain Charlie's sister.

Sometimes there might have been a touch of envy in Mary's generous
heart, as she watched the automobile with her brother and his friend
glide away up the green arched street. After all, Mary was young and
loved the country, and John Ward's roadster was a wonderful machine,
and the boy who had lived in the old house next door had been, in her
girlhood days, a most delightful comrade and playfellow.

The young woman could no more remember her first meeting with John or
his sister Helen than she could recall the exact beginning of her
acquaintance with Charlie. From her cradle days she had known the
neighbor children as well as she had known her own brother. Then the
inevitable separation of the playmates had come with Adam Ward's
increasing material prosperity. The school and college days of John and
Helen and the removal of the family from the old house to the new home
on the hill had brought to them new friends and new interests--friends
and interests that knew nothing of Pete Martin's son and daughter. But
in Mary's heart, because it was a woman's heart, the memories of the
old house lived. The old house itself, indeed, served to keep those
memories alive.

John did not see her at first, but called a cheery greeting to her
father, who with his pipe and paper was sitting under the tree on the
lawn side of the walk.

Mary drew a little back among the flowers and quietly went on with her
work.

"Is Charlie here, Uncle Pete?" asked John, as he came through the gate.

"He's in the house, I think, John, or out in the back yard, maybe,"
answered the old workman. And, then, in his quiet kindly way, Peter
Martin spoke a few words to Adam Ward's son about the change in the
management of the Mill--wishing John success, expressing his own
gratification and confidence, and assuring him of the hearty good will
that prevailed, generally, among the employees.

Presently, as the two men talked together, Mary went to express her
pleasure in the promotion of her old playmate to a position of such
responsibility and honor in the industrial world. And John Ward, when
he saw her coming toward him with an armful of flowers, must at least
have noticed the charming picture she made against that background of
the garden, with its bright-colored blossoms in the flood of morning
sunlight.

Certainly the days of their childhood companionship must have stirred
in his memory, for he said, presently, "Do you know, Mary, you make me
think of mother and the way she used to go among her flowers every
Sunday morning when we lived in the old house there." He looked
thoughtfully toward the neighboring place.

"How is your mother these days, John?" asked Mary's father.

"She is well, thank you, Uncle Pete," returned John. "Except of
course," he added, soberly, "she worries a good deal about father's ill
health."

"Your father will surely be much better, now that he is relieved from
all his business care," said Mary.

"We are all hoping so," returned John.

There was an awkward moment of silence.

As if the mention of his father's condition had in some way suggested
the thought, or, perhaps, because he wished to change the subject, John
said, "The old house looks pretty bad, doesn't it? It is a shame that
we have permitted it to go to ruin that way."

Neither Peter Martin nor his daughter made reply to this. There was
really nothing they could say.

John was about to speak again when Captain Charlie, coming from the
house with their lunch basket in his hand, announced that he was ready,
and the two men started on their way.

Standing at the gate, Mary waved good-by as her brother turned to look
back. Even when the automobile had finally passed from sight she stood
there, still looking in the direction it had gone.

Peter Martin watched his daughter thoughtfully.

Without speaking, Mary went slowly into the house.

Her father sat for some minutes looking toward the door through which
she had passed. At last with deliberate care he refilled his pipe. But
the old workman did not, for an hour or more, resume the reading of his
Sunday morning paper.


Beyond a few casual words, the two friends in the automobile seemed
occupied, each with his own thoughts. Neither asked, "Where shall we
go?" or offered any suggestion for the day's outing. As if it were
understood between them, John turned toward the hill country and sent
the powerful machine up the long, winding grade, as if on a very
definite mission. An hour's driving along the ridges and the hillsides,
and they turned from the main thoroughfare into a narrow lane between
two thinly wooded pastures. A mile of this seldom traveled road and
John stopped his car beside the way. Here they left the automobile,
and, taking the lunch basket, climbed the fence and made their way up
the steep side of the hill to a clump of trees that overlooked the many
miles of winding river and broad valley and shaded hills. The place was
a favorite spot to which they often came for those hours of comradeship
that are so necessary to all well-grounded and enduring friendships.

"Well, _Mister_ Ward," said Captain Charlie, when they were comfortably
seated and their pipes were going well, "how does it feel to be one of
the cruel capitalist class a-grindin' the faces off us poor?"

The workman spoke lightly, but there was something in his voice that
made John look at him sharply. It was a little as though Captain
Charlie were nerving himself to say good-by to his old comrade.

The new general manager smiled, but it was a rather serious smile. "Do
you remember how you felt when you received your captain's commission?"
he asked.

"I do that," returned Charlie. "I felt that I had been handed a mighty
big job and was scared stiff for fear I wouldn't be able to make good
at it."

"Exactly," returned John. "And I'll never forget how _I_ felt when they
stepped you up the first time and left me out. And when you had climbed
on up and Captain Wheeler was killed and you received your commission,
with me still stuck in the ranks--well--I never told you before but
I'll say now that I was the lonesomest, grouchiest, sorest man in the
whole A.E.F. It seemed to me about

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